Salad burnet
Poterium sanguisorba
Family · Rosaceae · Harmless
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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.
Fields and pasture · Uplands · Roadsides and waste ground · Walls and rocks
Also known assmall burnet, garden burnet
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
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.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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