"How to Plant, Grow, and Care for... salvia" is a book by The Old Farmer's Almanac.

There are over 1000 species of shrubs, Perennials, and Annuals in the Salvia family.The tribe Mentheae is part of the sub family Nepetoideae.One of several genera commonly referred to as "sage", it includes two widely used herbs.

The Old World and the Americas have over 900 total species, with three distinct regions of diversity: Central America and South America.There are 600 species, including Central Asia and the Mediterranean.[4]

The Latin phrase "to feel well and healthy, health, heal" refers to the herb's healing properties.The first author to describe a plant called "Salvia" by the Romans was Pliny the Elder.

Middle English sawge was borrowed from Old French sauge, and like the botanical name, stems from Latin salvere.The name "sage" is usually referred to as "common" or "culinary" in reference to any member of the group.The ornamental species are referred to as Salvia.

Annual, biennial, and perennial plants are included in the Salvia species.The stems are similar to other members.The leaves can be toothed or pinnately divided.The flowering stems are different to the leaves in that they are ornamental and showy.

The flowers are produced in racemes or panicles, and generally produce a showy display with flower colors ranging from blue to red, with white and yellow less common.The calyx is tubular or bell shaped, without bearded throats, and divided into two parts or lips, the upper lip entire or three-toothed.The corollas are shaped like a claw.The upper lip is usually three-toothed.The lower lip has two lobes.The upper cell fertile and lower imperfect are reduced to two short structures with anthers.There are two flower styles.Many of the fruits have a mucilaginous coating and are smooth ovoid or oblong nutlets.[8]

The growth of hair on the leaves, stems and flowers helps to reduce water loss in some species.Sometimes the hairs have glandular and volatile oils that make the plant smell different.Some of the oil-bearing cells are released when the hairs are brushed or rubbed.This results in the plant being unattractive to animals.[5]

The unusual pollination mechanism is the defining characteristic of the Salvia.It's central to any investigation into the systematics, species distribution, or pollination biology of Salvia.The lever mechanism is formed by the separation of the two thecae on each stamen.Sprengel was the first to show and describe the nototribic pollination mechanism.When a pollinator probes a male stage flower, the lever causes the stamens to move and the pollen to be deposited on the pollinator.The lever returns the stamens to their original position when the pollinator leaves the flower.In older, female stage flowers, the stigma is bent down in a general location that corresponds to where the pollen was deposited on the pollinator's body.The lever of most Salvia species is generic and can be easily released by many bird and bee pollinators of different shapes and sizes.The lever arm can be different lengths so that the pollen is deposited on different parts of the pollinator's body.If a bee went to one flower and pollen was deposited on the far back of her body, but then it flew to another flower where the stigma was more forward, pollination could not take place.New speciation can occur if this results in reproductive isolation from the parental population.The lever mechanism is believed to be a key factor in the speciation, adaptive radiation, and diversity of this large genera.[9]

George Bentham was the first to give a full monographic account of the genus.The Labiatae is the only comprehensive and global organization of the family.He was clear about the integrity of the family, but he wasn't as confident about his organization of Salvia.He wrote that he wanted to have formed five or six genera out of Salvia.He felt that the advantage of placing a relatively uniform grouping in one genus was counterbalanced by the necessity of changing more than two hundred names.There were more than 300 known Salvia species at that time.[5]

The twelve sections of Salvia were based on differences in corolla, calyx, and stamens.The Old World and New World species were divided into four subgenera.

More than 500 new species have been discovered since his work, but his system is still the most widely studied classification.The last hundred years have seen modified versions of the classification system offered by other botanists.[5]

For a long time, it was thought that the pollination and stamen structure of Salvia had evolved from one ancestor to another.The debate about its classifications has been opened by the immense diversity of the species.

In order to be monophyletic, Salvia had to have three separate clades with different sister groups.The staminal lever mechanism evolved through convergent evolution.The parallel evolution of the Salvia lever mechanism was explained in a later paper by the authors.It is surprising to see how similar the staminal lever mechanism structures are between the three lineages, so Salvia is an excellent example of convergent evolution.

The question of whether or not the tribe Mentheae is polyphyletic was addressed by Walker and Sytsma.The inclusion of 15 species from the same genera is required to make Salvia monophyletic.There are three independent origins of the staminal lever, and according to the information attained by Walker and the others, it is not the case where 15 species are actually members of Salvia but underwent character reversals.In 2017: Drew et al.The five small embedded genera were proposed to be subsumed into a broadly defined Salvia.Changing the name of the five small genera would require over 700 name changes.