Caitlin Atkinson
21.07.2023 - 22:59 / awaytogarden.com
THE LAST OF THE FEMALE HUMMINGBIRDS have just departed for points south, following the males who left well ahead of time as if to set up camp. But onward bloom three of my favorite hummingbird plants, three red-flowered salvias I always include in the garden somewhere, year to year.
Meet Salvia van houttii, Salvia coccinea ‘Lady in Red’ and the gold-leaf pineapple sage, Salvia elegans ‘Aurea,’ sometimes marketed as ‘Golden Delicious.’ Pineapple sage is the biggest plant, and latest of all to start to bloom here, but the last female ruby-throateds got a few sips in this year, at least. The plain green form, which like the golden-leaf one smells like pineapple when the foliage is touched, gets to more than 3 feet tall for me—taller in climates more favorable to this Zone 8-hardy beauty (a commenter says hers, in Humboldt County, California, is 7 feet tall).
The gold one (above in detail) is beautiful in a very big pot.Salvia van houttii is big, too. But it’s a little more sideways than stiffly upright, all lax and loose in a sort of crazy, unpredictable way that I like, or at least when grown as an annual in cold zones like mine.
(It would be hardy in about Zone 9-11, and become a 4-foot high and wide shrub.) The garden photo above is actually a grouping of three plants. Its flowers are lush and bigger than many of the other sages’, more on a par with those of the all-too-familiar Salvia splendens, and in fact Salvia splendens ‘Van Houttii’ is another name this one goes under.
Apparently van houtii was a version of Salvia splendens before breeders “improved” splendens into a stiffer, more upright thing. I’ll take the unimproved one, thank you.There is a gold-leaf form of Salvia van houttii, too—but it’s variegated, and
.Caitlin Atkinson
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