In February of 2009, a young sapling shot up next to a rock in our back yard. One of the people working on a project for us told us to cut it down – that it was a weed. But Dario, our gardener at the time said, in Spanish, something along the lines of “Oh, no, don’t cut that one down. It’s a salvia silvestre.” He clearly was quite fond of it. Later that same month we had some strong winds and one of the trees that fell down was, to Dario’s dismay, a salvia silvestre.
So I was curious. It’s certainly not the Salvia in the mint family that we know from the Northern Hemisphere, but the leaves are a little reminiscent of sage to the touch. What plant is it, then?
After I saw the one that fell, I learned to recognize the mature tree. It has a trunk that reminds me of one of my favorite savanna trees – Miconia rubiginosa.
Having the images here side by side, I see that the trunks aren’t all that similar. The grooves of the “salvia” on the left are lighter in color and straighter than those of the Miconia on the right. Nevertheless, the bark in both cases is deeply grooved and the trunks of the mature trees are roughly similar diameters.
In an abandoned pasture, the “salvia” is likely one of the tallest of the trees there, but if it’s growing along side a quebrada (a spring, sometimes seasonal) it’s just one among other tall ones. When in bloom, it’s possible to see that the flowers are white, but that’s about all you can tell from the ground. The flowers are high up in the crown of the tree, impossible to reach.
I decided my only hope of seeing a flower close-up would be to wait until our sapling matured enough to bloom, with luck while it was still short enough for me to reach the flowers.
