Herbs, perennial, emerging from reddish, filiform rhizomes. Stems ascending to erect, 10-40 cm tall, 4-angled, glabrous and smooth. Leaves in whorls of (4 or)5 or 6, subsessile; blade drying papery, oblanceolate, obovate, narrowly elliptic, or narrowly oblanceolate, 6-25 × 2-7 mm, glabrous or sometimes sparsely hispid to strigillose, base acute, margins flat, smooth or antrorsely aculeolate, apex acute to obtuse or rounded and abruptly mucronate; vein 1. Inflorescences terminal and in axils of upper leaves, with lax, few- to several-flowered cymes; axes glabrous, smooth; bracts none or leaflike, 2-6 mm; pedicels 0.5-2 mm. Ovary subglobose, 0.5-0.7 mm, densely strigillose with undeveloped trichomes. Corolla white, rotate, ca. 2 mm in diam., glabrous, lobed for 3/4 or more; lobes 4, triangular, apex obtuse. Mericarps subglobose to ellipsoid, ca. 2 mm, with dense uncinate trichomes ca. 1 mm, on pedicels elongating to 10 mm. Fl. May, fr. May-Dec.

Galium echinocarpum is very similar to G. hoffmeisteri and replaces it on Taiwan. Galium takasagomontanum may belong here as a synonym (see there).

● Montane forest regions, grassy fields, along drainage ditches; 900-3500 m. Taiwan.