Many of the sages bring welcome late season colour including this one in the Scented Garden.
The pineapple sage, Salvia elegans, is a great value plant, developing mounds of softly hairy, pineapple scented foliage and producing terminal panicles of tubular scarlet flowers from midsummer through to the first frosts. A Mexican native, where it grows in woodland fringes to 3,000 m altitude, it is of borderline hardiness, but it will survive outside during winter if given a sunny position and sharp drainage. In its native range this species is pollinated not only by butterflies, but also by hummingbirds. It has the square, ridged stems and two-lipped flowers typical of the mint family (Lamiaceae) to which it belongs.