Salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor) — Plotwright

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Salad burnet

Habit (mature) · Stefan.lefnaer / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Limited coverage

Salad burnet

Sanguisorba minor

A low, mounding herbaceous perennial of the rose family, grown chiefly in herb gardens for its tender young leaves, which taste faintly of cucumber and are used fresh in salads, soups, herbal butters, vinegars, and cold drinks. Native to northern Africa, western Asia, and Europe, it forms a rosette of pinnately compound, toothed leaflets and sends up wiry stems topped in July with rounded heads of greenish, purple-tinged flowers per the Missouri Botanical Garden. It is evergreen in mild-winter climates and self-seeds freely.

Review: Source-backed

Climate fit: moderate (45/100)

Edible

Border

Filler

Light

Full sun

Water

Moderate water

Mature size

9-24" tall · 18" apart

Hardy in zones

4-8

very cold to frosty winters

Summer heat range

Cool-Warm

cool to warm summers Interim Plotwright tier until the plant AHS range is authored.

Native in Illinois

No

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Per the Missouri Botanical Garden, salad burnet is intolerant of drought and is low maintenance, tolerating deer. It is evergreen in warm-winter climates, where the foliage persists; in colder regions the foliage usually does not survive winter but can still be harvested well after the first frost.

Climate notes

Cold hardiness

Now

Zone 6b

USDA

Chicago, IL · 1991-2020 average annual coldest day

Source: USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023 (1991-2020 climatology) via ArcGIS FeatureServer

Well-suited

2050

Zone 7b

Plotwright

Your zone + climate-model shift · SSP3-7.0 (regional rivalry)

Well-suited

In plain terms: cold winters — coldest nights typically around -3°F.

✓

Well-suited today and still thriving in 2050.

Heat tolerance

°C

°F

Loading current AHS heat-zone and plant heat-fit data at your coordinates…

Where this plant fits

Suitable across 40 ecoregions — 35 climate-resilient through 2070 · 5 suited today. Best matches first.

Appalachian mixed mesophytic forests

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Arizona Mountains forests

Blue Mountains forests

Canadian Aspen forests and parklands

Central Pacific Northwest coastal forests

Central Tallgrass prairie

Central-Southern Cascades Forests

Colorado Rockies forests

Cross-Timbers savanna-woodland

Sources & citations

Cite this page

For lesson plans, articles, or research that uses this page. To cite a single upstream fact instead, use its specific source listed below.

Plotwright. (2026, May 17). Salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor). Retrieved 2026, June 5, from https://plotwright.garden/plants/salad-burnet

Sources for every fact

Every fact on this page traces to a source. 18 fields cited — 18 source-backed.

Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder

Botanical research database

Backs 17 fields

Identity

Summary

Plant type

Light

Moisture

Hardiness

Heat zone

Size

Spacing

Habit

Design roles

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Wikimedia Commons

Photo · CC BY-SA 3.0

Backs 1 field

Image

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