WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

Though reaching 2–3-feet tall with several branching, leafy stems, this wide-ranging, weedy sage is often overlooked due to its nondescript flowers. Look for the accordion-like, ridged sepals around the tiny, bilaterally symmetrical, pale-blue flowers, and leaves without deep teeth on the edges. Like all members of the mint family, the stems are square.

FLOWER: June–October. The 1/4-inch long (5 mm), tubular flowers form a loose spike with whorls of paired flowers at nodes. A short, hairy upper petal covers the 2 stamens and pistils, and the longer lower petal with 3 rounded lobes droops downward. The pale-blue petals are solid without spots or streaks. The sepals, 3/16–5/16-inch long (5–8 mm) are point-tipped, cup the petals, and are creased like an accordion with minute (not long, gland-tipped) hairs on the ridges (use lens).

LEAVES: Opposite, at nodes around stem, the lance-shaped blades reach 2-inches long (5 cm) and 1/2-inch wide (12 mm) with pointed to rounded tips and shallowly toothed to entire margins.

HABITAT: Dry sandy, rocky soils, roadsides, disturbed areas; desert grassland and scrub, plains, pinyon-juniper, ponderosa woodlands.

ELEVATION: 5,000–7,000 feet.

RANGE: AZ, CO, NM, TX, widespread from Rocky Mountains to Mississippi River.

SIMILAR SPECIES: 12 species of Salvia in NM, 2 shrubs and 8 forbs with blue flowers. Sawtooth Salvia, S. subincisa, in much the same range, has flowers with white spots, a calyx covered with long, gland-tipped hairs,  and leaves with irregular, deep teeth.

NM COUNTIES: Nearly statewide (not recorded in De Baca, Lea, Valencia cos.) at low- to mid-elevation, arid habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Chaves, Cibola, Colfax, Curry, Dona Ana, Eddy, Grant, Guadalupe, Harding, Hidalgo, Lincoln, Los Alamos, Luna, McKinley, Mora, Otero, Quay, Rio Arriba, Roosevelt, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Taos, Torrance, Union.