Salvia virgataJacq.

wand sage

WFO wfo-0000302613 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Salvia virgata, photographed by Edmundas Greimas
fig. a Edmundas Greimas, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-06-27 / obs. 140171333

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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Salvia virgata is native: Afghanistan, East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Lebanon-Syria, Tadzhikistan, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Türkiye-in-Europe AfghanistanEast Aegean Is.IranIraqKazakhstanKirgizstanLebanon-SyriaTadzhikistanTranscaucasusTürkiyeTurkmenistanUzbekistanAlbaniaBulgariaGreeceItalyKrymNW. Balkan Pen.Türkiye-in-Europe
Native distribution of Salvia virgata, 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
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Kazakhstan KAZ
Kirgizstan KGZ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Tadzhikistan TZK
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Turkmenistan TKM
Uzbekistan UZB
Albania ALB EUROPE
Bulgaria BUL
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE

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 30 in flower of 31 examined

Proportion of examined Salvia virgata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 0 too few examined
Apr 1 1 too few examined
May 3 3 too few examined
Jun 8 9 89% 56% to 98%
Jul 7 7 100% 65% to 100%
Aug 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Sep 3 3 too few examined
Oct 3 3 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Salvia virgata 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. 30 of 31 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 27 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.

  • Euriples rugosa Raf.
  • Salvia affinis Spreng. ex Steud.
  • Salvia amplexicaulis Benth.
  • Salvia barrelieri Benth.
  • Salvia bauhini Benth.
  • Salvia caduca Vahl ex Hornem.
  • Salvia campestris M.Bieb.
  • Salvia caucasica Schrank
  • Salvia extersa Klokov
  • Salvia garganica Ten.
  • Salvia gigantea Desf.
  • Salvia grandidentata Ten.
  • Salvia hypanica Andrz.
  • Salvia mollis J.Jacq.
  • Salvia nudicaulis K.Koch
  • Salvia oblonga K.Koch
  • Salvia praecox Loisel.
  • Salvia quercifolia Benth.
  • Salvia rubra Spreng.
  • Salvia sibthorpii Sm.
  • Salvia similata Hausskn.
  • Salvia utilis Braun ex Engl.
  • Salvia virgata f. campestris (M.Bieb.) E.Peter
  • Salvia virgata var. campestris (M.Bieb.) Nyman

and 3 more.

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.