I wonder if you may have S.keelerii (Fall Blooming).
My zone 8 melissadora was in morning sun and usually
bloomed early part of summer(June -July)how ever we don't get as cold and do get a lot hotter than you. There are some other threads on using leaves and bags to winter over Salvias that are out of their Zone. Good Idea to have some cuttings rooted!
Art

It seems to me that Salvias have been late to bloom this year, but my set up is atypical, and I have no plants in beds for comparison.

The autumn-blooming Salvias at the J C Raulston Arboretum (Raleigh, NC) are just hitting their stride, and the greggiis are maxing out now too. I was there Saturday.

If we don't have a frost in the next few weeks, displays will be nice.

I have a four year old plant that I dig, pot up and replant each year here in zone 7 NJ. While it is not a particularly long time to learn about it I have noticed a thing or two. Mine was very late blooming this year and last. In both years early summer through to about the beginning of August was very hot and dry and the plant didn't set flowers. The two previous years with wetter cooler early summer weather were much better for the plant and it flowered heavily within a few weeks of planting. Right now I'm deciding whether to dig it yet again. It is fully recovered now, some 7 feet tall by 6 feet wide and covered in flowers. Perhaps the occasional bad years aren't enough to put me off because when it is happy it is a real beauty.

I was told that S. melissodora is an inferior form of S. keerlii. I can't get to grips with this. Obviously related, but quite different! Both have delightfully-scented foliage.

Melissodora has never done well in the UK, but keerlii has........very late flowering, just starting now, along with the frosts. But, in a large pot in the greenhouse, should be great.......but taking up too much space!

Each year is SO different!

Salvia melissodora took 2 years to bloom for me and now it blooms all year round,it is exquisite and the bees adore it,collected a ton of seeds the other day fromit,salvia keerli
has never flowered though,the plant died and now have a replacement,hoping to see flowers so I can compare to the delightful melissodora.

My S. melissodora was received as a cutting during the summer of 2010 and overwintered in my (almost) unheated greenhouse where it stayed green all winter. This past spring I transferred it to a 12-inch pot and placed it in a spot that got sun until early afternoon. It quickly grew to be close to 2 feet high and the same in diameter. When our weather got hot and dry begining in June, I had to water it daily and it would still wilt by mid-afternoon, so I moved it nearer a tree so that it was only getting a couple of hours of direct sun in late morning. It remained compact and healthy looking, but showed no inclination to set flower buds. My plan is to overwinter it in a protected area and plant it in the ground in full sun next spring. Since it will probably not survive here in the ground in z.7b, I am already rooting some cuttings now for planting into the ground in 18 months.
Question: When placed in the ground next spring, this plant will be close to several other salvias. Which other salvias will melissodora potentially cross with?

It might cross with any new world salvia. I hope you have bottom heat on the cuttings, and that you took cuttings with stiff new growth (no bark). I use the asparagus test:

Bend the cutting over, and take it where it might snap off, at the point where the fresh green stem transitions into a stiffer stem with bark, and make sure you have a node plunged into the medium, since that's where new suckers will come from, if the main stem dies or breaks.

I've had good luck with this one when planted in full sun in sandy loam. It got 6 feet tall and bloomed continuously mid summer on. I might protect the plant using medium sized bags of shredded oak or maple leaves for protection. This is a hybrid technique between mulching and building a mini cold frame around the plant.