Skip to content
Garden Forward
Create My Garden

perennial

Woodland sage

Salvia nemorosa

Climate-suitable non-native

Growing guidance

Horticultural figures below are practitioner estimates for planning, pending expert review. The botanical record further down is sourced and verifiable.

Current-climate suitability

Create a garden to see this

Future-climate resilience

Create a garden to see this

Sun

Full sun

Soil moisture

free-draining, average

Heat tolerance

Up to about 42°C

Cold tolerance

Down to about -30°C

Waterlogging tolerance

1/5

Drought tolerance

4/5

Mature size

0.4–0.7 m tall, 0.5 m spread

Seasonal interest

Early to late summer · Violet blue

Maintenance

low

Wildlife supported

General wildlife value 5/5 (verified species relationships are shown only where structured data exists)

Known risks or warnings

Needs cutting back after the first flush to repeat.

Toxicity: none

Verified botanical record

Accepted scientific name
Salvia nemorosa L.
Family
Lamiaceae (Lamiales)
Rank and status
species · accepted
GBIF record
Taxon 2927028

Recorded as introduced in: Alberta, Baltic States, Belgium, British Columbia, Brussels-Capital Region, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Flemish Region, France, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Great Britain and 11 further regions

Ranges are exactly as recorded in the GBIF source checklists and may be incomplete for widely cultivated species.

Salvia nemorosa, the woodland sage, Balkan clary, blue sage or wild sage, is a hardy herbaceous perennial plant native to a wide area of central Europe and Western Asia. It is an attractive plant that is easy to grow and propagate, with the result that it has been passed around by gardeners for many years. Its wide distribution, long history, and the ease with which it hybridizes have resulted in many cultivars and hybrids—along with problems in clearly identifying the hybrids and their relationship with S. nemorosa. It was named and described by Carl Linnaeus in 1762, with nemorosa ("of woods") referring to its typical habitat in groves and woods.

Description from Wikipedia — Salvia nemorosa (CC BY-SA), shortened and unedited in substance.

Native status and geographic context

  • United Kingdom: climate-suitable
  • United States: climate-suitable
  • Australia: climate-suitable

Native status is never inferred from climate similarity. Plants restricted or invasive in a jurisdiction are excluded from recommendations there.

Demonstration data. Climate, plant and retailer records shown here are realistic samples awaiting horticultural validation and live data connections.