Salad Burnet – The Perennial Vegetable I Keep Forgetting About

Salad Burnet: The Perennial Vegetable I Keep Forgetting About 

My son likes cucumbers, so, as well as growing cucumbers, I thought I would grow some plants that taste like cucumber for him to eat. One I kept hearing about was Salad burnet, Sanguisorba minor.

Salad burnet is a perennial plant. I first bought a packet of seed in 2018, and my original plant is still alive. Around that time I also got seed of Borage, which is an annual that tastes and smells a bit like cucumber. Borage is an annual that still pops up in my garden each year.

Salad burnet is one of those neglected crops that I grow and don't appreciate enough. It isn't particularly exciting to look at, it doesn't produce a huge harvest, the taste doesn't blow me away, and I tend to forget about it. But it is still there, year after year, quietly producing leaves that can be eaten.

I grow one plant in a pot, and apart from needing water over summer it largely looks after itself. It doesn't seem to need much attention at all. I occasionally pick some leaves, and that is about the extent of the work I put into it.

My Salad burnet starting to flower

The leaves have a sort of cucumber like flavour, although it is not exactly the same as eating a cucumber. The younger leaves are the ones I prefer, and they can be eaten in salads or just picked and eaten in the garden. I don't use huge amounts of it. Usually I just pick a few leaves when I am walking past and eat them. I think this is probably how I get the most use out of it. It isn't something I harvest a bowlful of, but it is nice having something green that can be eaten straight from the garden.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I first planted it. I had read that the leaves had a cucumber like flavour, and that sounded interesting, but there is a big difference between reading that something tastes like cucumber and actually having someone in the family willing to eat it.

My son did eat it when it was new, which was the main reason I grew it in the first place, but as he got older he largely stopped eating it and ignores the plant now. That's ok, I still graze on it while watering the garden.

The plant itself is fairly small and makes a clump of leaves. It is not one of those perennial vegetables that takes over half the garden, which is useful because I have plenty of plants that do that already.

Salad burnet leaf

The flowers are a bit weird looking. They are small and prickly looking balls rather than what most people would think of as a pretty flower. I quite like them for that reason, the flowers are odd and interesting in their own way.

Once it flowers, I scatter some of the seed around the garden. It comes up quite nicely, so I have ended up with more plants without having to put much effort into propagating them. I have other plants that do this too. I bought my first wasabi herb in 2018 and it is still growing in my garden, despite me doing very little with it.

That is another thing I like about salad burnet. I bought the original packet of seed years ago and I am still growing the plant. I don't need to buy more seed every year, and I don't have to treat it like a precious plant. It is just there.

I think this is one of the reasons I sometimes overlook perennial vegetables. I tend to get excited about the strange ones, the plants I have never grown before, or the ones that produce something particularly unusual. Salad burnet is much less exciting. It just keeps growing, which is actually a pretty good quality in a vegetable. 

Salad burnet - I keep forgetting about this plant

The history of Salad burnet

Salad burnet isn't a new or particularly unusual plant historically. It has been grown and eaten in Europe for a very long time, with records of it being used as a salad herb going back centuries. The young leaves have traditionally been valued for their cucumber like flavour, and they were also used to flavour drinks.

It was also used as a medicinal herb, particularly for stopping bleeding. The name Sanguisorba comes from Latin words relating to blood and absorbing, reflecting this old use.

In Italy, salad burnet was traditionally known as pimpinella, and there is an old saying:

“L'insalata non è bella se non c'è la pimpinella”

Roughly translated, this means “The salad isn't beautiful if there isn't pimpinella”, with another version saying that the salad isn't good or beautiful without it.

The tender leaves were added to salads for their fresh cucumber like flavour and aroma. Apparently salad burnet was once used much more widely than it is now, which makes me feel slightly better about growing a plant that I tend to forget about. Somewhere along the way we seem to have gone from needing pimpinella in our salad, to hardly anyone knowing what it is.

These days I am much more interested in eating a few leaves from the plant than trying to use it medicinally, but it is interesting to think that my rather neglected pot plant has quite a long history.

A mess of salad burnet seedlings

Growing salad burnet

I have found salad burnet to be an easy plant to grow. Mine is growing in a pot and mostly looks after itself. In the Canberra region it dies back somewhat in winter and then starts growing again as the weather warms up.

The main thing I have found is that it needs water during the summer. In a pot, this is more noticeable than it would probably be in the ground. I have always grown mine in a pot, partly because I have so many plants that I don't have room for everything in the ground. I suspect it would make a much larger plant if I gave it more space, but it doesn't seem particularly bothered by being in a pot. For something I tend to forget about, that suits me quite well.

If you are interested in trying unusual perennial vegetables, salad burnet is one I would recommend. It isn't ever going to replace your cucumber plants, but it is a very easy little plant to have around. And unlike a cucumber, you don't have to sow it again every year.

I have several other perennial vegetables and unusual edible plants growing in my garden that I sell when I have enough extra plants. You can see what I currently have available on my monthly for sale page which you can browse the perennial vegetable catalogue which has more information about the plants I grow.

Salad burnet isn't the most spectacular plant in my garden, or the most productive, or the tastiest. It is probably one of the least demanding. It has been growing here since 2018, and sometimes those are the plants that deserve a little more appreciation.