Salad burnet

Poterium sanguisorba

Family · Rosaceae · Harmless

EdibleTraditional use

The herb with leaves in rows, cut like little saws, that tastes of cucumber when chewed. It grows in limestone pastures and is one of the few wild plants recognised instantly by taste.

Where it grows

Fields and pasture · Uplands · Roadsides and waste ground · Walls and rocks

Also known as

small burnet, garden burnet

In flower

How to tell it

A compound leaf with many small, opposite, deeply toothed leaflets along an axis. Globe-shaped greenish flower heads, reddish at the top, with no visible petals. An immediate cucumber taste.

What it is confused with

Agrimony

Agrimonia eupatoria

Harmless confusion

Both have a compound toothed leaf. Agrimony has a tall spike of yellow flowers and unequal leaflets; salad burnet has a greenish globe head and tastes of cucumber. Taste decides.

What it is for

Young leaves in salad and cold sauces, a traditional use across Europe. It was also a fodder plant and a folk remedy to stop bleeding, which is where the genus name comes from.

Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.

With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.

Sources

Flora-On