Flora-Fauna

Salvia microstegia Boiss. & Balansa

First published in Diagnoses Plantarum Orientalium, ser. 2, 4: 17 (1859)
(Nouvelle Flore du Liban et de la Syrie, vol. 3, Pl. LXXXIII nº 1; 1983)

• Life-form & habit: Perennial herb, 40–100 cm tall, with erect, quadrangular stems that are glabrescent but strongly viscid and branched from the middle upwards.

• Leaves: Basal and first cauline leaves petiolate, upper ones sessile or rarely present; blades 3–7 cm long, greyish-white due to dense woolly indumentum, ovate to ovate-oblong, base cuneate or rounded to subcordate, margin irregularly crenate-dentate or sublobed.

• Inflorescence & flowers: Verticillasters distant, with 4–6 flowers; floral leaves ovate, acuminate, viscid, shorter than the calyx (5–8 mm). Calyx papillary-viscid, campanulate, 5–7 mm during anthesis, reaching 1 cm in fruit; upper lip with a very short median tooth. Corolla conspicuous, white, about 2 cm long (three times longer than the calyx), tube included or barely exserted, with a pubescent internal scale; upper lip strongly arched.

• Fruit: Nutlets small, smooth, and brownish at maturity.

• Phenology: Flowers June – September.

• Habitat & elevation: High-mountain limestone slopes and subalpine scrub; 1 200 – 2 000 m.

• Lebanese distribution: Reported by Mouterde from Jabal Barouk, Col du Baïdar, Sofar, Jabal Kneissé, and the Cedar forests of Bcharré.

• Native range: Lebanon–Syria, Türkiye.

• ⚠️ Taxonomic note: Close to S. cassia Sam. ex Rech. f., but distinguished by its narrower, ovate-oblong leaves, shorter calyx, and later flowering period; both belong to a high-mountain complex of viscid white-flowered sages in the northern Levant