This plant appeared among the petunias in a planter in Concord, Massachusetts. It has a hairless square stem, opposite toothed odorless lance-like leaves. The floral leaves are small and bract-like. There are purple lines around each node. The 1/2 inch flowers are mainly in pairs in racemes (some terminal, some emerging from the axils), but at some points they're in whorls. The flowers seem to have only 2 stamens. The upper two lips of the flower are flattened together and upright, the lower three lips are spreading. The middle lib is much larger than the side lobes and I can best describe it as hastate - arrow-shaped, with the basal lobes pointing outward at nearly right angles. Paul - Show quoted text -
Thank you. That narrows it down a great deal, actually. There's a 1974 book, "A Flora of Concord," by Richard Eaton, that lists every flowering plant that had been identified in Concord, Massachusetts. There's no record of Salvia in Concord. I'd been trying to match the plant to one of the plants known in Concord. But since the plant could have come with the potting soil, there's no reason why it has to be a local plant. Assuming it's a plant from the Eastern US, the closest match I could find in the 1908 Gray's Botany is Salvia lanceaefolia - which apparently now goes by the name Salvia reflexa. I looked online for photos and found: http://www.missouriplants.com/Blueopp/Salvia_reflexa_page.html Many of the calyxes on the plant I have are distinctly bilabiate as in the photo. They all have similar pronounced ridges. The flowers are variable in size and even in the number of lobes in the online photos I've seen, but this is a close match: http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=SARE3&photoID=sare3_002_ahp.jpg So, my best bet is that it's Salvia reflexa - not a Massachusetts native, but likely a visitor that came with the potting soil. Paul
