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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Salvia verbenaca

Citation: L., Sp. Pl. 25 (1753).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Wild sage.

Description:
Perennial herbs with a tough rootstock, with 1 to several erect branches to 70 cm tall, quadrangular, with short and long simple hairs usually eglandular below but becoming glandular above; leaves with a petiole 1-8 cm long but sometimes absent below the inflorescence; blade elliptic to ovate, 3-10 x 1.5-6 cm, acute, pinnately lobed to incised on basal leaves, dentate or often irregularly dentate, reticulate-pustulate, pubescent and often with sessile glands.

Inflorescence a thyrse without a distinct peduncle, often branched at the base, with sessile cymose part-inflorescences with a few flowers densely clustered around the nodes and with the internodes between them elongated at least at the base, with bracts usually shorter than the part-inflorescences; sepals unequally connate, 13-veined, 3.5-5 mm long or to 9 mm when fruiting, 2-lipped, with the posterior lip broad, slightly curved upwards with 3 small often mucronate lobes, with the anterior lip deeply 2-lobed, with simple hairs often gland-tipped and with sessile, glands; corolla bluish-purple to lilac, 2-lipped with both lips shorter than the tube, 8-13 mm long, glabrous, except for a few hairs on the hood of the posterior lip, with the posterior lip erect, hooded and scarcely 2-lobed, with the anterior lip with 2 narrow lateral lobes and 1 larger central one; stamens inserted in the throat of the corolla tube, with filaments glabrous; anthers with 1 cell fertile at the end of a curved part of the connective which is continued downwards into a flat part of it bearing the sterile remains of the second cell at the end, with the fertile cell enclosed in the hood of the posterior lip of the corolla; ovary on a thick disc, deeply 4-lobed, with a slender style inserted near the base and curved along the posterior lip of the corolla, with an often unequally 2-fid stigma.

Mericarps broadly obovoid, 2.5-3 mm long, not keeled, with the attachment scar almost circular, basal on the inside, smooth.

image of FSA3_Salvia_ver.jpg Flowering branch, calyx and leaf of form A, leaf of form B.
Image source: fig. 557E in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Ross-Craig (1967) Drawings Brit. Pl. 24:t. 17; Cunningham et al. (1982) Plants of western New South Wales, p. 576.

Conservation status: naturalised

Flowering time: No flowering time is available


SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Taxonomic notes: An extremely complex species which has been variously interpreted. Hedge (1972) Fl. Europaea 3:192 and (1982) Fl. Turkey 7:458 adopted a very broad concept without subspecific taxa and in his revision of the genus in Europe and Africa (Hedge (1974) Notes R. Bot. Gard. Edinb. 33:98) he explained: "S. verbenaca is an extremely variable and frequent species in North Africa and Europe with a difficult, extensive and not yet fully resolved synonomy. Most of the synonyms result from local treatments in Floras and floristic accounts; the more specimens one examines the more difficult it becomes to recognise subspecies or even varieties". However, since 2 somewhat different forms were introduced into different parts of S. Aust. it is convenient to distinguish them, and since the synonomy at subspecific level has not been resolved, they are simply called A and B. That is, form A agrees more or less with subsp. verbenaca and form B with subsp. clandestina (L.)Briq. (= S. clandestina L.) as delimited by Pugsley (1908) J. Linn. Soc.(Bot.) 46:144. His third one, the subsp. horminoides (Pourret)Pugsley, which is based on S. horminoides, as mentioned by H. Eichler (1965) Suppl. 268, has not yet been recorded for S.Aust.

Author: Not yet available


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