Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Burnet, the Great

BURNET, the Great, or Wild, or Meadow Burnet; the Sanguisorba officinalis, L.; a native plant growing on moist pastures, especially on a marly and calcareous soil, in the North of England. It is a hard, woody plant, and grows from two to three feet high, branching towards the top, and terminated by thick oval spikes of flowers, of a greyish brown-colour, which appear in June and July.

This vegetable ought not to be confounded with the following, or the Upland Burnet, which is a very different genus of plants. The Great, or Wild Burnet, has been usefully employed in the art of dyeing. Vogler dyed wool, silk, linen, or cotton, in a decoction of the dried, brown-red flowers, of a grey colour with a greenish shade, by the addition of alum; of a dark lilac, which soon assumed a beautiful grey, by adding a solution of tin; and of a deep black colour, on dropping into the liquor a solution of copperas.

According to Bechstein, the whole of the wild burnet is used in tinning leather, as a substitute for oak-bark: and the plant is also relished by cattle, especially by sheep.