THE SALAD BURNET — continued. 
are so strikingly sufFused. It was, however, taken, as a matter of course, to indicate 
the medicinal use of the plant, and Gerard says : — 
** Burnet is a singular good herbe for wounds, and commended of a number : it stancheth bleeding, and therefore it was 
named Sanguisorba, as well inwardly taken as outwardly applied/* 
While the Great Burnet inhabits damp meadows, the Salad Burnet often forms 
a considerable portion of the turf in the thinnest soil on chalk downs. We do not 
yet know enough of the ecology and physiology of the plant to say whether this 
preference for a calcareous soil is in any way connected with the acidulous character 
of its juice ; but this gives it a refreshing cooling flavour of cucumber to which it 
owes various uses and names. An Italian proverb runs : — 
L’ insalata non e bella ove non e la pimpinella.” 
“ The salad is not good in which there is no pimpinella,'* 
Gerard 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.” 
A century later Nicholas Culpeper writes of it as “a most precious herb.” 
“ It is,” he says, 
“a friend to the heart and the liver. Two or three stalks put in a cask of ale or wine, especially of claret, are known to 
quicken the spirits, refresh and cheer the heart, and drive away melancholy.” 
This was the origin of the generic name Poterium, from the Greek ttotiqplov, 
poierion, a drinking-cup, which Linnaeus took from Dioscorides (who had applied it 
to some other plant) and gave to the Salad Burnet. 
The smooth, cut-edged leaflets, marked with radiating veinings and whitish 
below, are quite fern-like in their charm ; and the red angular peduncles and 
red-tinged heads of flowers often give their colour to a whole hill-side. The 
flowers at the top of each head are commonly female and they first expand their 
crimson stigmas. The lateral flowers, which are next to open, are perfect but 
protogynous ; whilst the lower ones are generally staminate. Thus when the 
anthers, hanging in tassels of red silk-like filaments, are ready to burst and 
discharge their pollen to the wind, most of the stigmas in the same head will 
probably have been already pollinated by pollen blown from another. 
