Salvia littae

Salvia littae, Litta's purple sage, is a bold, late-flowering Mexican salvia from the cool cloud forests of Oaxaca, grown for thick, plush spikes of fuzzy, purplish-pink to magenta flowers that open when the gardening year is nearly done. On stout spikes a foot or more long, the densely felted blooms have a rich, tactile quality unusual even among salvias, and the color glows in the low light of late autumn.

From that mountain-forest home the plant brings a taste for richer, moister ground than most sages want, and a habit of spreading gently by underground runners into a soft-leaved clump of fresh green. The whole is aromatic in the way of the genus, and builds through the summer into a substantial, upright plant of three to six feet before the flowers arrive.

Timing is everything with this one. Salvia littae flowers very late, from late fall into early winter, so the plant is at its best in the Deep South and other frost-free or nearly frost-free gardens where an early freeze will not cut the display short. Where the season is long enough, the reward is a wave of hummingbird-thronged magenta at a time when almost nothing else is blooming.

Site Salvia littae in sun to light shade in rich, well-drained soil with regular water, at the back of a warm border, in a subtropical planting, or in a large container that can be sheltered where winters bite. Give room for the runners to spread, pair with other late salvias and warm-climate perennials, and, in cold-prone gardens, grow the plant in a pot to bring the buds through under cover. A collector's late-season salvia for the patient, warm-garden gardener.