How do you recognise Salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor)?

Leaf

Harry Rose, Wikimedia · CC BY 2.0

Salad burnet

Sanguisorba minor L.

Also known as: Small burnet, Garden burnet

Family: Rosaceae

20 to 50 cm tall

Dry meadows, vegetable gardens, gardens, chalky soils

Flowering: May – August

Full sun

Hardy to -25°C

❓ How do you recognise this plant?

Its young leaves have a slight cucumber flavour and are traditionally used in salads. 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

🌸 Flowers

Small, round, greenish flower heads with dangling red stamens

🍎 Fruits

Small angular achenes

🪵 Bark

Dense basal clump

🗺️ Distribution

Europe, western Asia, North Africa; common in dry chalk grassland in France.

🐝 Value for pollinators

Small, inconspicuous greenish flowers, mainly wind-pollinated, limited interest for insects.

✂️ Horticultural uses

Flower meadows, vegetable garden (young leaves in salads); little grown in ornamental borders.

⚠️ Possible toxicity

No known toxicity, edible leaves with a cucumber flavour.

⚠️ Look-alike species

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.

🌿 Other Rosaceae to discover

ℹ️ Educational profile — do not use it to judge whether a plant is edible or safe.

🌱 This database is constantly evolving — species and information are added and corrected regularly. Spotted a mistake? Report it below.