Searching high and low for a low maintenance plant providing nearly year color for your garden? Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea) can be your salvation. Sometimes called Blood or Scarlet Sage and native to most of Florida, this Salvia provides a well adapted, easy to grow plant for the Treasure Coast
Uses for Tropical Red Salvia in Your Garden and Other Things:
I think of Tropical Red Salvia as a back of the perennial border plant in an informal garden. This is a freely flowering and reseeding plant that tends to grow about three feet tall and blow romantically in the wind. A member of the mint family, this Salvia (there are many types) has a more herbal than minty scent. The flowers are a great attractor of Hummingbirds and Butterflies who stop by to sip the nectar. As for humans, this is not the Sage used in cooking, although it is a relative. Folklore exists about the medicinal uses of this plant, but the jury still seems to be out on its edible qualities. Probably best to leave it to the birds and the bees.
How to grow:
Tropical Red Salvia is shamefully easy to grow thriving even in sugar sand. One thing these plants do not like is standing water of any kind. Provide well drained soil and sun to partial shade with regular water in the summer. Trimming off spent flowers helps and cuts down on the number of seedlings. The easiest way to propagate this plant is to place some small pots filled with potting soil under the plants and let the seeds fall in, new plants sprout and then start a new planting with the potted plants.
Tropical Red Salvia is usually not difficult to find, follow this link to search for plants http://www.plantrealflorida.org/plants/
Happy Gardening!
Amelia Grant