Salvia naming – good to understand for gardening, essential for science

To avoid confusion, it’s good to understand salvia naming conventions. There are a couple of ‘levels’ of naming, to do with whether a plant is a species as found in the wild, or a garden cultivar. I try to use standard naming as it minimises ambiguity. Species Botanists collect plants and name them in the binomial (two name) system of genus and species. Salvia is the sage genus, and for example ‘officinalis‘ is the herb sage species. The binomial is indicated by italics, i.e. Salvia officinalis. The genus gets a…

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