my newest sage

The num­ber of exam­ples that I have in the gar­den of the sage genus, Salvia, is grow­ing. The lat­est addi­tion is a tiny lit­tle plant of white sage, Salvia api­ana, that I put into a hole in the front yard where a few other plants have failed. The plant is native to this area and doesn’t require addi­tional water so I’m con­fi­dent that it should have no prob­lem with with the dry soil and the hot sun expo­sure. Time will tell whether it can com­pete with the roots of nearby estab­lished plantings.

Local exam­ples of the white sage show it to be fairly low, mound­ing plant of strongly-scented green­ish white leaves. Robin Middleton’s amaz­ing salvia site says that “peo­ple find the fra­grance of the foliage unpleasant…I don’t par­tic­u­larly like it,” and the descrip­tion at Las Pil­i­tas Nurs­ery calls the per­fume a mix­ture of “sage, pine nee­dles, burn­ing rub­ber, skunk.” To my nose, that mix­ture of sage and pine nee­dles and burn­ing rub­ber and skunk smells like the local chap­ar­ral and long hikes on a sunny after­noon, so I actu­ally enjoy it. In the late spring the low plant puts up infor­mal head-high spires of white flow­ers, some­times with a laven­der tint, but for me the plant is most valu­able for its attrac­tive foliage.

Photo from the Wiki­me­dia Com­mons, con­tributed by Eugene van der Pijll [ source ]

In addi­tion to hav­ing a num­ber of uses for the local Native Amer­i­cans as a food, fla­vor­ing and med­i­cine, the white sage was con­sid­ered sacred, fig­ured in sweat lodge cer­e­monies and was used remove evil spirits.

After the con­clu­sion of 1996 Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion in San Diego one of the more cre­ative post-convention protests involved an action to exor­cise the evil that some thought the con­ven­tion brought to town. In an act of purifi­ca­tion, in an cer­e­mony that involved drum­ming and chant­ing, pro­test­ers burned sticks of white sage to cleanse the Con­ven­tion Cen­ter site of the resid­ual evil.

July 09 2008 04:56 am | Categories: landscape • landscape design • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: • •

One Response to “my newest sage”

  1. Greg on 10 Jul 2008 at 8:52 am #

    So, we should bring white sage to the vot­ing booths in the fall then…

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