General rules to follow when planting salvia sage

Salvia regla (Royal sage, mountain sage).

Salvia Coccinea (lady in red or Scarlet sage).

Salvia microphylla (Hot Lips, Baby sage).

Salvia leucophylla (San Luis purple sage, purple sage, or gray sage).

Salvia guaranitica (black and blue salvia, hummingbird sage, or Anise-scented sage).

General rules to follow when planting salvia sage.

Jepson Flora Project Interchange, Regents of the University of California.

Jepson Manual treatment for Salvia spathecea. Averett, Deborah Engle Neisess, Kurt R.^ a b 'RHS Plantfinder - Salvia spathacea'.Salvia spathacea has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. The more robust cultivars include 'Powerline Pink,' with magenta to crimson flowers, which will grow in hot sun, even inland, and 'Avis Keedy,' which has light yellow flowers. One showy cultivar is 'Confetti,' which has both yellow and pink flowers on the same plant. Several cultivars exist although some selections are stronger than others. spathacea can get powdery mildew, which can be treated with a spray of milk diluted in water.

Seeds should be collected as early as possible, or they can be predated by insects. It easily propagates by seeds or rhizomes. Deer and gophers generally leave this strongly aromatic plant alone. As the alternative common name suggests, it is used by feeding hummingbirds and will attract them to the garden. Supplemental water can help encourage a longer flowering season, but a late summer rest from watering is desirable. It will also grow in the open, in ordinary garden soil, in part or even full sun. Unlike other California native sages, it spreads from underground rhizomes. Salvia spathacea is easy to grow in the garden, and is a very useful groundcover for dry shade under oaks. They are round to ovate, with a length of 3.5 to 6.5 mm. The fruits are 4 nutlets, dark brown to black in color. Flowers vary in color from green through light pink and magenta to purple. Both the style and the stamens protrude outside the corolla tube. The two fertile stamens are attached to the corolla tube.

The upper lip of the corolla is 7–8 mm., with two shallow lobes, while the lower lip is longer, 10–12 mm. It is two-lipped, with the upper lip entire, or unlobed. The inflorescences are subtended by showy bracts which can be ruby red to dark maroon or brown. The flowers are produced in clustered whorled inflorescences 15–30 cm (6–12 in) long and 6 cm in diameter on spike-like stems with each node on the top half of the stem having flowers. The hairs tend to be denser on the bottom surface of the leaves. Like the rest of the plant, they are covered with hairs which make the plant soft to the touch. They are oblong to almost arrowhead-shaped at the base, and can be puckered with wrinkles, and have rounded teeth at the leaf edges. long, and highly aromatic when crushed or touched. Like many species in the mint family it has very pronounced square stems, and the entire plant is covered with wavy glandular hairs. It spreads by rhizomes and can form colonies up to 130 cm (51 in) in diameter. Each plant produces a single flowering stem which rarely branches. When not flowering plants grow less than 50 cm (20 in) tall, forming clumps of sprawling foliage. Salvia spathacea is an evergreen perennial with flowering stems growing from a woody base, 30–150 cm (12–59 in) tall. It is a common species that grows on open or shady slopes in moist oak woodland, chaparral, and coastal sage scrub not far from the Pacific Ocean. The pitcher sage is found in the California coast ranges from the Sacramento Valley south to the San Diego area. It is cultivated in gardens for its attractive flowering spikes and pleasant scent. This fruity scented sage blooms in March to May with typically dark rose-lilac colored flowers. Salvia spathacea, the California hummingbird sage, hummingbird sage, or pitcher sage, is a species of flowering plant in the family Lamiaceae, native to southern and central California growing from sea level to 610 m (2,001 ft).

Hummingbird sage