Salvia interrupta Schousboe

A plant with herbaceous shoots and a shrubby base, growing 2 to 3 ft high, of spreading habit; young shoots clothed with soft hairs. Leaves of variable shape and size, usually oblong-ovate in the main with a pair of lobes at the base, or pinnate with two pairs of leaflets; on weak or flowering shoots they are simply oblong-ovate; the larger leaves are up to 7 or 8 in. long, the smallest 11⁄2 in. long, the stalks varying from 4 in. to 1 in. in length; both surfaces are wrinkled and hairy, the lower one especially; margins round-toothed. The inflorescence is a tall, open panicle 2 to 4 ft long, the flowers being borne on a few branches towards the top. The whorls of flowers are 1 to 2 in. apart with six or nine flowers in each whorl, each on a downy stalk 1⁄8 to 1⁄4 in. long. Corolla blue with a violet tinge, white on the throat and lower lip; opening dark, it pales with age, 11⁄4 in. long, 1 in. wide, downy; lower lip three-lobed, the middle lobe notched, 3⁄4 in. wide; upper lip hooded, compressed. Calyx viscid, tubular, 1⁄2 in. long, ribbed, glandular-downy, two-lipped. Anthers attached to the stalk of the stamens by a secondary curved stalk. Style slender, exserted.

Native of Morocco; introduced to the Cambridge Botanic Garden in 1798. This handsome sage, which flowers from May to July, although it survives moderate winters unharmed, is not perfectly hardy. Probably for this reason it has at times disappeared from cultivation. It is sometimes grown in pots for conservatory decoration. It likes all the sunshine it can get.

Closely allied to S. interrupta is S. candelabrum Boiss., an endemic of S. Spain.