BED'STRAW' (Galium). A genus of plabts belonging to the natural order Rubiacex, and distinguished by a small wheel-shaped calyx and a dry two-lobed fruit, each lobe containing a single seed. The leaves are whorled, and the flowers minute; but in many of the species the panicles are so large and many-flowered that they ornament the banks and other situations in which they grow. The species are very nu merous, natives chiefly of the colder parts of the northern hemisphere, or of mountainous regions within or near the tropics. About 200 species are known, some of them very common weeds. Among these is the yellow bedstraw (Galiuni verum)—sometimes called Cheese Rennet, be cause it has the property of curdling milk, and is used for that purpose—a small plant with linear deflexed leaves and dense panicles of bright yellow flowers, very abundant on dry banks. The flowering tops, boiled in ahem, af ford a dye of a bright yellow color, much used in Iceland; and the Highlanders of Scotland have long been accustomed to employ the rootg, and especially the bark of them, for dyeing yarn red. They are said to yield a red color fully equal to that of madder, and the cultivation of the plant has been attempted in England. The roots of other species of the same genus possess similar properties, as those of Galium trifidam, a species abundant in low, marshy grounds in Canada ; and those of Galium boreale, another North American species, used by some of the Indian tribes. Like madder, they possess the property of imparting a red color to the hones and milk of animals which feed upon them. .Medicinal virtues have been ascribed to some of the species, as Gahm, rigidam and Galium awl lugo, which have been extolled as useful in epi lepsy. The roasted seeds of some, as Galium aparine, the troublesome goosegrass, or cleav ers of England — remarkable for the hooked prickles of its stern, leaves, and fruit—have been recommended as a substitute for coffee; but it does not appear that they contain any principle analogous to caffeine. This plant is a
native of the northern parts of Europe, Asia, and America. Its expressed juice is in some countries a popular remedy for cutaneous disor ders. The roots of Gallant tuberosum are fari naceous, and it is cultivated in China for food. The name bedstraw is supposed to be derived from the ancient. employment of some of the species, the herbage of whieh is soft and fine, for strewing beds.
BEE (commonly explained as 'the trembler,' from the root bhi, to fear; AS. bed, Ger. Bierre). Any hymenopterous insect of the group Apoidea. This group (the 'genus Apis,' and until recently regarded as the single family Apithe, or at most two families. Apide and Andrenida) comprises those Hymenoptera which have the hind feet dilated or thickened, the hairs of the head and thorax feathery, and the tongue adapt ed to lapping the nectar of flowers.
Bees stand, in organization and intelligence, and in social and constructive abilities, at the head of the whole insect tribe; they abound in all parts of the world, but are most numerous in the warmer latitudes; about 5000 species are known to science; they exert a most important influence upon the vegetable world by their ser vices in the cross-fertilization of plants, some of which now depend wholly upon their cooperation for their existence; and they furnish mankind with the important food honey, some species be ing semi-domesticated for the purpose of making it in large and manageable quantities for man's benefit.