Salvia aurea L.
Branched, very aromatic shrub to c. 2 m high; stems densely puberulent. Petioles 3-10 mm long, grey-tomentose and with numerous oil glands. Lamina 1.5-2.7 × 1-2 cm, suborbicular or elliptic, tomentose and glandular, entire or crenulate; base broad-cuneate to truncate; apex rounded. Verticels indistinct, forming a fairly dense, terminal, glandular-hairy infl.; fls subsessile; bracts c. 1 cm diam., orbicular, green, hairy below and with oil glands, persistent. Calyx c. 2 cm long at flowering, very strongly accrescent, broad-campanulate, with oil glands and scattered hairs outside; upper lip with 2, broad, rounded teeth; lower lip very broad and rounded; both lips somewhat brownish purple inside. Corolla 3.5-4.5 cm long, yellow in bud, brownish when expanded, with nerves hairy outside; upper lip very large, folded lengthwise and hooded. Stamens ± included; connective of fertile, upper arm c. 6× filaments, brown. Nutlets 2.8-3 mm long, ± broad-ovoid, with ventral ridge.
N.: Mercury Bay area (Coromandel County).
Cape Province, South Africa 1978
Cultivation escape.
FL Aug-Nov.
S. aurea is cultivated in warmer parts of N.Z. It is a very distinctive sp. with fls of an unusual colour which at anthesis give the impression of being withered although fully expanded.
