Burnet, Salad

Information on Salad Burnet

Common Name: Salad Burnet
Scientific Name: Sanguisorba minor
Irish Name: Lus an uille
Family Group: Rosaceae
Distribution: View Map (Courtesy of the BSBI)
Flowering Period


Click for list of all flowering by month
Salad Burnet is not easily confused with other wild plants on this web site.


This is a short, perennial plant of gravely banks, grasslands and dry banks. It has very attractive, pinnately divided leaves with three to twelve pairs of leaflets all less than 2cm long.  The tiny pale green flowers have red, feathery stigmas and are in dense, 1-2cm globular flower-heads which are borne on slender, red 15-35cm stalks from May to September.  It is easy to miss this little plant as the flower-heads are really so small and seem to blend in with the background.  The seeds are one or two achenes in the rigid hardened calyx.  This is a native pant belonging to the family Rosaceae.

I first came across this little plant on the bank above Killiney Bay, Co Wicklow in 2007 where I also photographed it.

If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please submit your sighting to the National Biodiversity Data Centre

The leaves of this plant taste of cucumber and are often added to summer drinks and salads, as the common name might suggest.

Burnet, Salad
Burnet, Salad
Burnet, Salad
Burnet, Salad