Great burnet is a perennial of the rose family with dark wine-red, button-like flower heads that have no petals. In the United States it is a native wildflower of the West, found for example in California's wet meadows and bogs, and it is also grown in gardens for its flower heads.
Appearance
- Growth form
- An upright, clump-forming perennial about 1–5 ft (30–150 cm) tall, branching near the top.
- Leaves
- Mostly at the base, each leaf made of several toothed, oblong leaflets arranged in pairs along a central stalk.
- Flowers
- Tiny flowers packed into short, dense, oval to cylindrical heads about 1/2–1 in (1–2.5 cm) long. Each flower has four colored instead of petals and four stamens; the head opens from the top down.
- Flowering time
- June to September
Look-alikes
Canadian burnetSanguisorba canadensis
Canadian burnet has creamy white flowers in long, cylindrical spikes and grows in bogs, swamps, and roadsides of eastern North America; great burnet has short, dark red heads.
Why they get mixed upBoth are burnets that bloom from summer into fall, with tiny flowers packed into spikes at the stem tips.
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- wet meadows
- bogs and fens
- streamsides
- Range
- Native to cool parts of the Northern Hemisphere across Europe and northern Asia, and to the West Coast of North America. In California it grows mostly in the far northwest.
- Preferred conditions
- In California it usually grows in wetlands and is closely tied to soils.
Growing it
- Care
- Grown as an ornamental; the cultivar 'Tanna' has won the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Conservation
- IUCN Red List
- LCLeast ConcernLow risk of extinction
- Status
- California lists it as rare in the state, though it is more common elsewhere.
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