2U SAGE. 



united threeorfour together, in axillary, opposite verticillastri, with 

 ovate, mucronate, caducous bractese at the base, forming a kind of 

 lax terminal spike. The calyx is campanulate, turbinate, striated, 

 rather woolly, two-lipped, the upper lip three cleft, the lower 

 bifid, rather larger ; the segments acute, mucronate, often 

 purplish. The corolla is large, of a light blueish purple, 

 ringent ; tube subquadrangular, ventricose above ; upper lip 

 galeate, erect, emarginate ; lower lip three-lobed, the middle 

 lobe larger, obcordate, crenulate, emarginate. The stamens 

 are two, with their filaments curved and affixed transversely 

 by the middle, each to a short pedicel, with a fertile anther at 

 one extremity, and an abortive anther at the other ; the fertile 

 anthers are one-celled, linear-oblong, and concealed in the upper 

 lip *. The germen is seated on a prominent purplish disk, and is 

 deeply four-lobed, greenish, obtuse, supporting a long filiform, 

 whitish, incurved style, and a bifid acute stigma. The fruit 

 consists of four roundish achenia inclosed in the calyx. Plate 

 40, fig. 2, («) calyx and pistil ; (b) corolla opened to show the 

 stamen; (c) stamen, showing the filament, connectivum, and 

 anthers ; (d) fruit ; {e) pistil. 



Common Sage is a native of the South of Europe, and has been 

 much cultivated in our gardens, for an unknown period. It 

 flowers in June and July. 



The generic name is derived from salvere, to be well, in re- 

 ference to the medical properties of the plant. Dioscorides 

 describes it by the name of sAe.\*o-^«xoj» ; and by some it is con- 

 sidered the o-(pa.y.i\o<; of Thecphrastus. 



The genus includes several ornamental plants, for the cha- 

 racters of which we must refer to works on general botany. 

 A variety of the S. officinalis, or according to Valil, a distinct 

 species, called by him S. lavandulifolia, — the Salvia minor, 

 small Sage, or Sage of Virtue, of the old authors, — is sometimes 

 cultivated, and is said to be preferable to the common garden 

 kind. There are several other varieties, but they differ very 

 little in medical properties. For medicinal use, those plants 

 which grow in dry stony places are to be preferred. Hill 

 thinks that the ancients employed the flowering tops gathered 

 just before the expansion of the corolla, at which time the 



* In the throat of the corolla are also the rudiments of two abortive 

 stamens ; showing the affinity of the genus Salvia to the plants of the clas* 

 Didynamia. 



