Description

General: Rose Family (Rosaceae). Sanguisorba minor is an introduced, hardy, herbaceous, relatively long-lived, evergreen, non-leguminous, perennial forb. It is usually a branched caudex (thick base of stems) with a prominent taproot and sometimes-weakly rhizomatous.

Small burnet plants have alternate pinnately compound leaves. Leaflets are mostly 9 to 17, oval to oblong, 4 inches long and coarsely serrate. Total height varies from 6 inches on droughty sites to approximately 25 inches on irrigated sites. The flowers are sessile and closely packed in head-like to elongate spikes, which are 3 to 8 inches long. The flowers are mostly imperfect, the lower ones staminate and the upper ones pistillate with no petals and about 12 stamens, which are filiform. Native burnet species have two to four stamens. The seed is an achene, oblong, about 4 to 5 mm long, woody, papillate-warty, between and along rather prominent ridges, which are four in number.