PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
39 
clinging than those of the Burdock. These are the Acaenas; 
they are mostly natives of America and New Zealand, and 
some of them (especially A. sarmentosa and A. microphylla ) 
form excellent carpet plants, but their points being furnished 
with double hooks, like a double-barbed arrow, they have 
double powers of clinging, 
Burnet. 
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth 
The freckled Cowslip, Burnet, and green Clover. 
Henry V, v. 2, 48. 
The Burnet (Poterium sanguisorba) is a native plant of no 
great beauty or horticultural interest, but it was valued as a 
good salad plant, the leaves 
tasting of Cucumber, and Bacon 
(contemporary with Shakespeare) 
seems to have been especially 
fond of it. He says (“ Essay 
of Gardens”): “Those flowers 
which perfume the air most 
delightfully, not passed by as 
the rest, but being trodden upon 
and crushed, are three—that is, 
Burnet, Wild Thyme, and Water 
Mints; therefore you are to set 
whole alleys of them, to have 
the pleasure when you walk or 
tread.” Drayton had the same 
affection for it— 
u The Burnet shall bear up with this, 
Whose leaf I greatly fancy .”—Nymphal V. 
It also was, and still is, valued as a forage plant that will grow 
and keep fresh all the winter in dry barren pastures, thus often 
