Salvia leucanthaCav.

Mexican bush sage

WFO wfo-0000301425 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Salvia leucantha, photographed by JCorven
fig. a JCorven, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-24 / obs. 165486812
Salvia leucantha, photographed by Hopeland
fig. b Hopeland, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166613633
Salvia leucantha, photographed by Cristina Romero Ríos
fig. c Cristina Romero Ríos, CC0 1.0 / obs. 108460913
Salvia leucantha, photographed by Zazil Dellamary
fig. d Zazil Dellamary, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 99532173
Salvia leucantha, photographed by John Brew
fig. e John Brew, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 61568889
Salvia leucantha, photographed by Viral joshi
fig. f Viral joshi, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126632532
Salvia leucantha, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. g Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 15097390
Salvia leucantha, photographed by Tom Lloyd Evans
fig. h Tom Lloyd Evans, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 116485814

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 9 botanical countries

Regions where Salvia leucantha is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Panamá Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestCosta RicaEl SalvadorHondurasPanamá
Native distribution of Salvia leucantha, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
Costa Rica COS SOUTHERN AMERICA
El Salvador ELS
Honduras HON
Panamá PAN

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 74 in flower of 82 examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Salvia leucantha observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 74 of 82 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 3 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Salvia bicolor Sessé & Moc.
  • Salvia discolor Sessé & Moc.
  • Salvia leucantha f. iobaphes Fernald

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.