Discover
Identify
Record
Salad Burnet - Poterium sanguisorba
The native plant is subspecies sanguisorba. Short, rather greyish tufted plant: leaves mostly basal, pinnate with 3 to 12 pairs of rounded or elliptical leaflets. Flowerheads globose, 10 to 20 mm, upper flowers with reddish styles, lower with yellow anthers.
Fodder Burnet (subspecies balearicum) is occasional in wildflower seed-mixes ; it is more robust and leafy, with more deeply and sharply toothed leaflets.
Great Burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis). Salad and Fodder Burnet have rounded leaves; Great Burnet leaves have cordate bases and the plant is much taller (to 1m).
Rounded leaves
The native subspecies is found in dry grassland, usually on calcareous soils. The non-native subspecies is often present in natural landscaped areas associated with new development.
End of April to September.
Perennial
Fairly common and widespread in England and Wales, more coastal in Scotland.
It is fairly frequent in Leicestershire and Rutland, but mainly found to the eastern side of Leicestershire and occasional elsewhere in the county. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 121 of the 617 tetrads.
In the current checklist (Jeeves, 2011), the native Salad Burnet (subspecies sanguisorba) is listed as locally frequent, and Fodder Burnet (subspecies balearicum) is listed as alien and rare. The latter is becoming commoner through introduction in wildflower seed-mixes.
Leicestershire & Rutland Map
Enter a town or village to see local records
MAP KEY:
Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
Coloured circles = NatureSpot records: 2020+ | 2015-2019 | pre-2015
UK Map
Species profile
- Common names
- Salad Burnet
- Species group:
- Wildflowers
- Kingdom:
- Plantae
- Order:
- Rosales
- Family:
- Rosaceae
- Records on NatureSpot:
- 93
- First record:
- 26/04/2007 (Dave Wood)
- Last record:
- 19/05/2024 (Cann, Alan)
Total records by month
% of records within its species group
10km squares with records
The latest images and records displayed below include those awaiting verification checks so we cannot guarantee that every identification is correct. Once accepted, the record displays a green tick.
In the Latest Records section, click on the header to sort A-Z, and again to sort Z-A. Use the header boxes to filter the list.