Hot Lips is generally started from cuttings. Hummers like all Salvias with flowers at least 1/2 inch tubes.

It is possible to get seed of Hot Lips, but many of the seedlings will have only solid red flowers.

Although seed can be gathered on most Salvias, most of them produce a few seeds at a time, and these fall out within a few days of ripening. This means that a great deal of labor is required to collect as few as 100 seeds. There are optimal climates and locations for collecting seed of many sages. I can only get a few hundred of Salvia greggii seeds in North Carolina, but seed is more plentiful from the same plants in Colorado.

In California Hot Lips does set seeds, but I have not tried growing any new plants from seed. It starts pretty well from cuttings. Hot Lips is well liked by hummingbirds.

Didn't Robin say somewhere that some of the seeds he received came true? The microphyllas are light seeders here in New Jersey. I haven't tried to collect them, but every year a few seedlings show up in the garden. Mostly they are nothing special, but there have been a few that are proving quite hardy. Those are getting special attention. There is a pink flowered seedling of Raspberry Royale that is tough as heck that needs to be moved to a better situation and an red-orange microphylla with purple hairs on the upper petal that survived last winter despite being in a damp spot.

I have 2 Hot Lips in pots on my balcony, along with hummingbird feeders. The hummers go to the Hot Lips, then have a drink at the feeders!

Hot Lips! Maybe they are spicy.

Here in Zone 8 Hot lips never sets seed.Cuttings are easy.
I have lots of S. microphylla and S.greggii hybrids. I have also noticed that some growers list Hot lips as S.greggii
which is incorrect.

Here in Zone 8 Hot lips never sets seed.Cuttings are easy.
I have lots of S. microphylla and S.greggii hybrids. I have also noticed that some growers list Hot lips as S.greggii
which is incorrect.

Mine doesn't produce seed in Atlanta, GA I'm planning to root cutting over winter so I'll have more plants next year. It's become my favorite salvia.

I have found that even amongst what is offered as hot lips from growers there is a lot of variation in the white to red ratio and I wonder about the regression back to solid red or white. Can a plant regress to that from a cutting?, because somehow my cuttings off a tipical hotlip plant bloomed red. Go figure! I am not a very scientific kid of lass. This is just a backyard observation.

Hot Lips is a strange plant in that the variation in flower color is water, temperature, and fertility related. Some botany grad student needs to research the mechanism.