White burnet

Sanguisorba canadensis L. (Rosaceae), Canadian burnet or white burnet, is a robust perennial herb of eastern North America, ranging from Labrador and Newfoundland south through New England and the Appalachians to Georgia, and west to the Great Lakes region, with disjunct populations in the Pacific Northwest. Plants arise from a stout woody rhizome and produce erect, glabrous, sparsely branched stems 0.5-2 m tall. The pinnately compound basal and lower stem leaves bear 7-17 oblong to ovate leaflets 2-7 cm long with finely serrate margins, glabrous green surfaces and short petiolules. Inflorescences are dense, cylindric, terminal spikes 4-20 cm long, each crowded with many small four-tepalled apetalous flowers; the species is distinguished from Eurasian burnets by its pure white flowers with conspicuous long-exserted white stamens, opening from the bottom of the spike upward. It grows in wet meadows, bogs, fens, streambanks and seepy mountain slopes on neutral to calcareous soils.