I googled that, and you know, I think I was sold a 'paul' and not a van houttei. I thought they were red, but mine is more of a wine/magenta color. I will take a picture of it tomorrow and see what you think. If it's a paul, and it produces seeds, you can have them!

Hi Heathen1,

Thanks for that, looking forward to your pic:)

Cheers Annette

:o) okay... here's a supposed van houttei, not as red as I expected... more of a wine, like Paul is supposed to be...

Hi Heathen,

Nice pic, that is definately the van houteii ,It is the one I have got the flowers are described as wine coloured.It sure looks pretty with the chiapensis:)

Cheers Annette

oh okay... because I google it and see fire engine red flowers... that's what I thought I was getting. :o) It probably looks better with the chiapensis than if it was the fire engine red that I had expected. Besides that, I wasn't finding ANY seed!

The Van Houteii is notoriously shy about setting seed, I have read, I have collected 2 seeds in 6 months, I sowed them and they both shot, this salvia throws different coloured vh flowers, so it is going to be exciting to see what mine throws.

Perserve with checking for seeds, as it maybe fun for you too to see what happens with the seedlings.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Here is the scoop on Salvia vanhouttei. I got the burgundy (brownish-red) flowered plant from Longwood Gardens who in turn purchased it from a nursery in South Africa on a buying trip. I then disseminated the plant to as many nurseries, collectors, and botanical grdens that were interested over several years. The plant in the images posted looks like this form.

Betsy Clebsch had Dr. Ian Hedge, emeritus of the Royal Botanical Garden of Edinburgh and the world's foremost expert on Salvias check out the provenance of Salvia vanhouttei and determined that it was probably the result of early breeding experiments on Salvia splendens by Dutch or Belgian nurserymen. The sport was named after van Houtte, a Belgian who did much collecting in Brazil.

The original burgundy form often throws orange flowered seedlings that look a lot like the ancestral splendens. These were distributed by several persons, including Frances Parker of Beaufort, SC. In my hands, many of these were weak growers.

One of the individuals who bought the burgundy vanhouttei was Barb Smith of Pendleton, SC (near Clemson University). She came up with the form Paul (dark purple), named after her son. Some of the Paul clone generated the other forms, including a lavender, a plum, a light orange (peach), and other orange to red forms. Pine Knot Nursery of southern Virginia (Clarksville) near Henderson, NC also had a plant of Paul that threw similar colored forms, which I have.

Properly, all of these plants should be listed as Salvia splendens, although there probably are genes from other sages thet contribute the different leaf shapes, growth habits, and flower colors. Any generation after F2 is going to develop forms that vary from one parent to the other.

Naming these is a problem, since many of the discoverers of the chance seedlings have not given them varietal names.

Salvia Splendens 'Paul' is flowering in my garden at this moment. Grown it from seed from seedhunt under the name Salvia splendens pink flowered. One seedling is just like the photograph on this forum.

The pictures from earlier parts of this thread are of a burgundy (red-brown) form identical as I can determine to the plant I got from Longwood Gardens. The plant I know as S. vanhouttei `Paul' has dark purple flowers, and it is the form which throws all sorts of different colored progeny.

This series of plants is a good example of why names of plants should remain the same for only vegetatively propagated material, and a new name chosen for seedlings. Good record keeping of the provenance also helps.

I had purchased Paul from Atlock Nursery last year. Someone else had asked me for the seed from that one but it never produced any that I could find.