These two photos show the similarity best. The first photo was taken of one of ours, in the
summer. The second was taken at the Botanical Gardens in winter.
It looks quite like another
variety, Salvia elegans
(“pineapple sage”), but that bush has longer and more pronounced bright red
flowers with black stems:
There seems to be a fair amount of difference of opinion on Salvia microphylla. Some
call it watermelon sage, others blackberry sage, and nothing I've found on the web mentions
the mint-like smell of the leaves, which the sample in the Botanical Gardnes also had. But then,
Salvia elegans is supposed to smell like pineapple, and I didn't smell that on the
sample I saw at the Botanical Gardens. There's also a variety of opinion on the size of the
plant, though all agree that it flowers almost continuously. There also seem to be different
cultivars, one of which has red and white flowers. None of
the links
on the web look quite like ours.
