Sanguisorba minor belongs to the Rosaceae family. This herb is hardy and can tolerate cold and warm with the best of us. It prefers well drained soils as puddles tend to give it grief, but it handles foot traffic of large and small creatures – both I and my dog walk through and on it, obtaining a fresh scent rising from the touched leaves.
Also known as burnet, garden burnet, small burnet, Toper's plant, and burnet-bloodwort, salad burnet is an herbaceous edible perennial. Placed as a leading edge of an herb garden gives you the opportunity to easily harvest the leaves and flowers to add to beverages, butters, spreads, vinaigrettes, and – of course – salads! Its cucumber-like flavor brings a crisp, clean touch to most everything sharing the method of conveyance to one's mouth.
This plant can be purchased at various nurseries, shared from an existing plant one of your friends may have, or seeded directly into the garden where it can handle full sun to partial shade. The plant self-seeds and also spreads from its roots but is not too “invasive” and is readily controlled by borders.
A walking path of Burnet, Thyme, and Mint is suggested by Francis Bacon as herbs “which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed”. Such elegant language they spoke back in the late 1500 to early 1600. The combined smells are quite “heavenly”!
Native to the Mediterranean Region, it was brought to Britain in the early 1500's and quickly naturalized. It probably came to the Americas as exploration and settlement took place during the 1600's. Since then, it has also naturalized itself in most of North America and parts of South America.
The flower is a beautiful reddish globe of blooms.
The plant grows upright for the most part, but easily conforms to being “walked upon” and will lie flat on the ground in a circular fashion.
I hope you try SaladBurnet in your herb garden.