HERBS DESCRIPTIONS: SALAD BURNET
Sanguisorba minor ROSACEAE
This plant I call the “fountain herb”, because it grows just like the fountains on those old bird-baths; the outside leaves lie down towards the ground and the new leaves spring upright in the middle. It is a perennial, and stays green and fresh all winter, a boon to the herb gardener.
If you are a vegetarian and like your salads all the year round, plant salad burnet. Its cool cucumber flavour and delicate green leaves add a fillip to those winter greens when other salad vegetables and fruit are not so plentiful. You will be doing your health a favour, too, for burnet, like borage, is a general blood purifier and tonic, with a cooling relaxing effect. It helps to reduce the indigestibility of cucumber, and is often used with or instead of this vegetable for people with digestive troubles. The chopped leaves can be added to herb vinegars too.
The plant grows easily from seed, and will self-sow if in the right conditions. It is quite a small, compact herb, some 12 to 15 inches high, in a tidy little rosette, and would be very suitable for a window box or small pot, and ideal for home-unit dwellers who want to grow a few herbs in a limited space. Pull off the old leaves from underneath if you wish to keep it tidy for pot cultivation; but if it is in the open garden the old leaves will just decompose happily out of sight under the fountain of new leaves.
The flowers are not impressive: long slender stems with a tight knot of tiny green florets at the tip. Keep these nipped off unless you want seed to start off new plants; the flavour of the leaves is better if the plant is not allowed to flower.
*57\181\8*
Add A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.