Salad burnet or Great burnet: how to tell them apart?
Salad burnet and Great burnet look alike and are often mixed up. Here is how to tell them apart, feature by feature, with their photos and the details to look for.
⚡ The quick answer
Salad burnet
Sanguisorba minor
Great burnet
Sanguisorba officinalis
Great burnet has long, upright, dark red-purple flower spikes, whereas salad burnet has smaller, rounded, greenish flower heads tinged with red, and foliage that smells of cucumber when crushed.
🍃 Leaves
Compound, with rounded toothed leaflets, blue-green, tasting of cucumber
Compound, toothed ovate leaflets, blue-green
🌸 Flowers
Small, round, greenish flower heads with dangling red stamens
Small ovoid dark reddish-purple flower heads, with no visible petals
🍎 Fruits
Small angular achenes
Small angular achenes
🪵 Bark
Dense basal clump
Erect clump, sparsely branched stems
📏 Size
20 to 50 cm tall
30 to 80 cm tall
🗺️ Habitat
Dry meadows, vegetable gardens, gardens, chalky soils
Damp meadows, gardens, rich soils
⚠️ Toxicity
No known toxicity, edible leaves with a cucumber flavour.
No known toxicity.
🔎 And from the Great burnet side
Great burnet has long, erect dark reddish-purple flower spikes, whereas salad burnet has smaller, rounded, greenish flower heads tinged with red, and foliage that smells of cucumber when crushed.
🌿 Go further
Want to practise spotting these details on real photos? Floraneo offers profiles and quizzes for dozens of look-alike species.
ℹ️ Educational profile — do not use it to judge whether a plant is edible or safe.