134 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
Rootstock thick, somewhat fleshy with a woody centre, pro- 
ducing numerous radical leaves and stems 6 inches to 2 feet high, 
sometimes quite erect, sometimes almost decumbent. Leaves 
with 4 to 12 pair of leaflets, which slightly increase in size towards 
the apex, where they are { to $ inch long. Stem-leaves with 
narrower divisions; their stipules with a semi-lunate deeply 
incised, herbaceous, free portion. Flower-heads 3 to ? inch long. 
Calyx-segments oval, spreading, somewhat scarious, dull-purplish, 
margined with olive. Fructiferous calyx about § inch long, ovate- 
ovoid, with 4 rather thin wings and numerous anastomosing 
veins, pale olive-brown. Achenes blackish, closely invested by the 
indurated calyx, indistinctly striate. Plant glabrous, except some- 
times towards the base. Leaves deep-green, often tinged with 
reddish, paler and frequently glaucous beneath. 
Common Salad Burnet. 
French, Pimprenelle Sanguisorbe. German, Wiesenknopf. 
The Salad Burnet forms much of the turf on some of the dry chalky downs in our 
southern counties. It was originally brought into notice by Rocque, a gardener at 
Waltham Green, near London, who found means to recommend it to the Dublin and 
other agricultural societies, and succeeded in getting it largely used. It does not appear 
that the attempt to introduce it into agriculture has permanently succeeded. Its 
produce is seldom very great, it lasts but a short time, and cattle do not appear to relish 
it very much, especially when fully grown. It was at one time largely used as a salad 
plant, and was an ordinary ingredient in “cool tankards.” 
The leaves, when bruised, 
taste and smell like cucumber, and are very refreshing. The whole herb is slightly 
astringent, and possesses many of those qualities which are so valuable in vegetable 
food when eaten in an uncooked state. We may here remark on the desirability of 
giving encouragement to the consumption of fresh salad-herbs of all sorts, the greater 
the variety the better ; and although those who live in London have little or no 
opportunity of extending their vegetable dietary beyond the routine supply introduced 
into Covent Garden market, those who are in the country may without expense provide 
a constant variety of health-giving salad plants for the table. It will appear reasonable 
to all who care to think on the subject, that green fresh plants contain in their tissues 
certain salts and other constituents intended by nature to enter into the human system, 
and adapted for it. By boiling or otherwise cooking these plants, all these valuable 
substances are lost, unless, indeed, the water in which they are dissolved be drunk with 
the vegetable, a proceeding which we cannot recommend as palatable. Gerarde says : 
“The lesser Burnet is pleasant to be eaten in sallads, in which it is thought to make 
the heart merry and glad, as also being put into wine, to which it yeeldeth a certaine 
grace in the drinking.” 
~ SPECIES IL—POTERIUM MURICATUM. Spach. 
_ Pirate COCCXXI. 
P. Sanguisorba, var. muricatum, Benth. Handbook Brit. Bot. p. 198. 
P. polygamum, Waldst. und Kit. Koch? Syn, Fl. Germ. et Helv. ed. ii. p. 258. 
Stem herbaceous, erect. Leaflets oval or oblong, deeply inciso- 
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