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Woolly sage

Salvia funerea

Also called Death Valley Sage

Woolly sage
Photo: Eric in SF, CC BY-SA 3.0
Family
Lamiaceae (Mint family)
Grows as
Shrub, Perennial
Native range
SE. California, Nevada
Climate
subtropical

About

Salvia funerea, is a species of semi-deciduous perennial shrub with the common names Death Valley sage, woolly sage, and funeral sage, is an intricately branched shrub associated with limestone soils in the Mojave Desert in California and Nevada. It is characterized by an overall white appearance due to wooly hairs that cover the stems and leaves.

How to grow it

This species is regarded as unsuitable for cultivation, due to its need of very restrictive habitat conditions, which are limestone cliffs or alkaline desert washes with limestone soils. Furthermore, collecting the seed from the plant is challenging, with one botanist finding viable seeds for the first time in 15 years in 2026. The plant does not flower every year, and is only found in difficult to reach locations.

Where it grows

The plant can be found in dry alkaline washes with limestone soils and on the limestone cliffs of narrow canyons. It is distributed throughout the western slopes of the Amargosa Range (the Funeral Mountains, Black Mountains, and Granite Mountains), in Titus Canyon in the Grapevine Mountains, and in the northern Panamint Range in Grotto and Mosaic Canyons. Most populations are within Death Valley National Park, in Inyo County, California and Nye County, Nevada.

Other Salvia plants

Turkish Black Sage · Wuyi Mountain Sage · Salvia adoxoides · Egyptian Sage · Orange Sage · Mediterranean sage · African Blue Sage · Salvia alatipetiolata · Cederberg Sage · Handsome Sage · Algerian Sage · Salvia amethystina

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Salvia funerea by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

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