Ill WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND BLOSSOMS. 



The Salad Burnet (Poterium sanguisorba). 



When " cool tankards " were more generally compounded 

 than they are to-day, Salad Burnet was a better-known plant, 

 for, like Borage, it formed one of the ingredients. It was used 

 also in the salad bowl, its leaves having a flavour very similar 

 to that of cucumber. It is a perennial, the rosette of radical 

 leaves springing from a stout rootstock. The leaves are all 

 pinnate ; the leaflets in pairs, coarsely toothed, and a terminal 

 leaflet. The stems are slender, branched, and the flowers are 

 gathered into a purplish head. They have no petals, and are 

 of two kinds : the upper ones have a four-lobed calyx with a 

 narrow mouth, from which two styles with brush-like stigmas 

 are exserted ; the lower bear both stamens and stigmas, or 

 stamens only. The stamens are four in number, attached to 

 the mouth of the calyx, and the anthers hang out. The plant 

 may be found abundantly in dry pastures, especially in a chalk 

 district, flowering from June till August. 



The Rough Burnet (P. muricatum), found in cultivated fields in the Midlands 

 and South of England, is probably only a variety of sanguisorba, owing its large 

 size and roughness to the richer soil it finds in the fields. 



The Great Burnet (P. officinale\ was formerly regarded as constituting a separate 

 genus, Sanguisorba, but it is very similar to the Salad Burnet. Its flowers, how- 

 ever, are all alike, and contain both stamens and pistils. It is much larger than 

 Salad Burnet, and its flower-heads more cylindric, longer, and of a darker purple 

 hue. The stamens, too, instead of hanging far outside the calyx, are no longer than 

 the lobes of that organ. The flowers produce honey, and are fertilized by insects. 

 The leaflets are fewer and longer in this species. Its habitat is damp meadows, and 

 its flowering time the same as Salad Burnet. 



The name Poterium is the Latin term for a drinking-cup, in allusion to its use 

 indicated above. 



