One of the outstanding salvias in a garden, Salvia oxyphora bears big fuzzy cerise flowers through the warmer months.
Salvia oxyphora grows as a thicket of thin (5 mm) but sturdy vertical canes about 1.5 – 2 m high. Even when not flowering it is attractive, as it is well filled with large dark green leaves 150 mm long and 50 mm wide. Leaves taper to an extended point, with serrated margins, matt dark green above and covered with tiny hairs below giving a pale reflective effect. Veins are strongly prominent below and depressed above.
The flowers are in congested terminal spikes, held above the foliage. Flowers are around 40 mm long, with the densely furry cerise corolla extending from a green calyx. They are full of nectar if you care to pick and suck one.
Here it flowers from Spring till Autumn, with a peak in early Summer. It has proven to be quite drought tolerant, with isolated plants surviving without any watering, although plants wilt dramatically and do much better with regular watering. I suspect oxyphora is less tolerant of wet conditions, and plants here occasionally just wilt and die suddenly, as if from a root fungus. Hence I keep them scattered around. I think it looks best as a feature plant among others, rather than as a mass planting.
Salvia oxyphora likes the usual fertile free-draining soil, and will grow in full sun or part shade. It grows easily from cuttings. It expands from underground stems, although not aggressively, so could also be divided.
RU says it’s from Bolivia where it is rare and found on the edges of streams in subtropical forests, and will tolerate light frost. There is also a form with dark bracts.