Crushed leaves smell of cucumber; low herb of chalk turf with paired round toothed leaflets and small round crimson-green flower heads
Salad burnet, Sanguisorba minor.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Salad burnet
Native · flowers May–Sep · chalk and limestone grassland
Sanguisorba minor — Rosaceae
A low, wiry herb of chalk and limestone grassland with rosettes of neat, toothed leaflets that smell of cucumber when crushed, and small round green-and-crimson flower heads. It has long been used in salads and summer drinks. It lacks showy petals because its flowers are largely wind-pollinated.
How to spot them
- ▸Rosette of leaves with up to about 12 pairs of round, deeply toothed leaflets; smells of cucumber when crushed
- ▸Rounded, speckled flower heads about 1–2 cm across, green with red-crimson feathery stigmas at the top and yellowish stamens below
- ▸Tufted plant up to about 50 cm on wiry, branching stems
- ▸Great burnet (a different species) has dark crimson, oblong heads and no cucumber scent, and grows in damp meadows
- ▸A plant of dry, lime-rich turf on chalk and limestone downs
How to know it
Francis Bacon listed it with wild thyme and water mint among plants that perfume the air when trodden on
Salad burnet — from Bacon's essay 'Of Gardens'.
Its genus name means 'absorbing blood', because it was used by herbalists to staunch wounds
Sanguisorba (sanguis, blood; sorbere, to absorb) — salad burnet.
Cucumber-scented leaves were used in summer drinks and salads; the Wildlife Trusts also note its rusty flower heads helped it heal wounds
Salad burnet.
Its small flower heads lack showy petals, since pollination is largely by the wind, with female flowers on top and male below
Salad burnet.
A rosette herb of dry limestone turf, unlike its damp-meadow relative with tall, dark crimson flower heads and no cucumber scent
Salad burnet versus great burnet.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Rosaceae; Sanguisorba means 'blood-absorbing' and minor distinguishes it from great burnet, Sanguisorba officinalis
- •The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust gives a flowering season of May to September and a height up to 50 cm
- •The crushed leaves smell of cucumber and have long been added to salads and summer drinks
- •Herbalists prized it for healing wounds, and its rusty-coloured flower heads made it a favourite
- •Francis Bacon, in 'Of Gardens' (1625), recommended burnet, wild thyme and water mint to be planted where they would be trodden on and release scent
- •Mainly found in England, on chalk and limestone grassland
- •Flowers are wind-pollinated in the main: upper flowers female with red feathery stigmas, lower flowers male with dangling stamens
- •A typical plant of species-rich chalk grassland, a habitat of which very little remains
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust — Salad burnet