This plant has a huge number of common and folkloric names. As well as 'cleavers' I've heard it called 'goosegrass' and 'sticky willy'. Great for annoying friends when we were kids.

What does it smell like? I have a plant that looks very similar to that I am trying to identify too. Mine smells like flavored gourmet coffee. It has sticky leaves that are narrow with white fuzz on them and its about two feet high and wide, compact growth and but hasn't bloomed yet. You can smell it quite a few feet away especially on a humid day or evenings.

We have one especially hot compost bin (a Rubbermaid plastic job my brother gave me a few years ago) that heats up more than my pallet bins just from being so completely enclosed, greenhouse effect. We put our weedy-seedy things into that bin. But in the past I put weeds in our other compost as well, whomever said that one is always going to have to weed so what the heck is right on. As for keeping stuff out of the landfill, that isn't relevant for me, there is no way I would EVER put plant material in my trash. The only exception is bagged poison ivy. Creeping charlie I put in a large plastic bag that is sealed up and I let it cook to death before composting it. Creeping charlies frightens me! When I found some in a flower bed a week or so afo I actually gasped in horror. :-) I put my other worst weed, quack grass, into the hot compost bin. Marcia

That stuff truly is Nature's Velcro. I've been hand pulling it off and on for years. I just snatch it out of the ground. It really helps to not let it get out of hand. As you know, getting out of hand happens in 2 weeks. We did not have any last year but this year we're thick with it. I used to think my dogs would get it on them while walking and bring it back. My dog does not live at that house anymore so that theory is out the window. I get it scattered around the yard, so not sure where it comes in from. It could be an annual plant that comes back from the previous year's seed.