Blue sage is a low, spreading, much-branched shrub growing to perhaps 3' tall with scurfy, glandular pubescent branches and opposite, spatulate to round-obovate leaves entire-margined and petioled.  The flowers appear in several interrupted compact whorls and have a blue to purple 2-lipped calyx and a blue to rose or white 2-lipped corolla with stamens and style exserted.  The flowers are subtended by oblong to elliptic bracts which are greenish to purplish and have ciliate margins.  Blue sage is a not-infrequent inhabitant of desert flats, rocky benches and mountain slopes from about 2500' to 8800' in sagebrush scrub, pinyon-juniper woodland and joshua tree woodland in most of the Mojave Desert. It blooms from May to July.  The soft shaggy hairs on the calyces and bracts identify this as var. pilosa. These pictures were taken in the East Mojave.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Salvia 2) dorrii 3) pilosa.
Pronunciation: SAL-vee-a DORE-ee-eye pi-LO-sa
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.