Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs, undershrubs or shrubs with various kinds of indumentum
• Leaves entire, toothed, or ± deeply lobed
• Inflorescences terminal on branches, spike-like or panicled; flowers in 2-many-flowered verticils; bracts usually reduced, rarely similar to upper leaves, sometimes showy, deciduous or persistent; bracteoles usually present
• Calyx 2-lipped, ± as long as corolla tube, sometimes accrescent, variously hairy and often glandular; upper lip entire or 3-toothed, median tooth often shorter or obsolete; lower lip equally 2-toothed, longer than the upper
• Corolla 2-lipped; tube straight or curved, usually enlarging towards throat, annular-pilose or exannulate within, invaginated with a plate of internal tissue or not; upper lip usually longer than lower lip, straight or falcate, usually concave and ± compressed, entire or bifid; lower lip spreading, 3-lobed, median lobe usually much larger than the two lateral
• Stamens 2, curved; connective produced and lying within upper lip and bearing an oblong or linear anther theca; other part of connective produced into a variously shaped appendage, sterile or bearing a much reduced anther theca, appendages cohering or not; staminodes 2, small and usually inconspicuous
• Style included or exserted from corolla, usually exceeding stamens, unequally 2-lobed
• Nutlets triquetrous to compressed, ovoid to subglobose, smooth, mucilaginous on wetting or not
• x = 8, 11 (6, 7, 9, 10) (aneuploids, high polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Salvia L.
  • Linnaeus: 23 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 15 (1754)
  • Bentham: 190 (1833)
  • Bentham: 262 (1848)
  • Bentham: 1194 (1876)
  • Briquet: 270 (1896)
  • Baker: 456 (1900)
  • Skan: 307 (1910)
  • Launert & Schreiber: 26 (1969)
  • Codd: 79 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 900, widely distributed in temperate and tropical regions of both hemispheres
• Southern Africa : Species 27, widespread; 1 European species and 3 from tropical America have become naturalised