Salad Burnet Seeds (Sanguisorba minor)

Salad Burnet (Sanguisorba minor) is a compact native perennial of dry chalk and limestone grassland, growing 20 to 50cm tall. It forms a low, evergreen rosette of pinnate leaves with small, toothed leaflets, and sends up slender stems carrying tight, rounded heads of tiny reddish flowers from May to August, followed by small burred fruits. The leaves smell and taste of cucumber when crushed and have long been used in salads and drinks.

Salad Burnet is one of the reliable low-growing perennials of downland turf. It is wind-pollinated rather than a nectar plant, so its value lies in structure and longevity: the leafy rosettes stay green through winter, cope well with grazing and cutting, and knit into short, species-rich grassland alongside thymes, trefoils and small scabious.

It needs well-drained, low-fertility soil in full sun and is at its best on thin chalk or limestone ground, where it shrugs off drought. Avoid heavy, waterlogged or shaded sites and rich soils, where taller plants will crowd it out. It suits a chalk bank, a dry sunny verge, a downland-style meadow or a herb-rich lawn cut short in late summer.

Sow in autumn onto bare or scarified ground, surface-sown and firmed in without covering. Rosettes establish in the first year and flowering usually starts in the second summer. Cut or graze in late summer or autumn once seed has been shed and remove the cuttings to keep fertility low. Combine with our 100% wildflower mixes or single species that share the same dry, sunny conditions.