Wonderful photos of one of the most stunning of all Salvias! Congratulations!

BUT....so difficult here in England! Despite wet summers, it gets destroyed by spider-mite. Also a very untidy plant which needs support. I had flowers like yours 4 years ago. This year it had lots of buds, most of which aborted. Last week I had a good flowering-stem, just for one day....something broke it!!! Probably a pigeon. Grrrr!

mark4321, did you get them from a mail-order nursery? I'm still trying to find one myself.

No Rich, he got it at a recent Strybing sale. I am going to make their next sale in a week from now... I hope that S. dombeyi will be there. Does it set seed, where there are hummingbirds? The flower is clearly too long, but they just go through the calyx. I saw my hummer doing that today with S. regla, which has just started blooming.

Mark:
WOW!One day I would like to see this plant in person but
first comes the greenhouse to grow it in.
Art

I had one from Digging Dog a few years ago, but lost it. They need a new stock plant as well.

It hates hot humid weather and spider mites will kill it quickly. I had my best luck with it keeping it just inside the shade line of some trees in a pot, and during a cool summer.

Why is this popularly called "sacred Incan sage?" I've never heard that Salvia dombeyi has ethnobotanical or shamanic uses and google shows nothing.

Aaron Jenks gave a talk at the 2008 Salvia Summit at Cabrillo College on this subject. The flowers of this sage and those of S. tubiflora and S. oppositiflora were collected for an old Incan ceremony where a ceremonial victim was led to a ritual site where he was "sacrificed" to the volcano god, as I remember. He was covered with these flowers and they were strewed behind him as representations of his blood.

For more, search for ÃUXCHÂU! or ñucchu.

http://www.infocusco.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5060

Here is a link that might be useful: Salvia dombeyi

A laugh a minute, no doubt! But fascinating.

Rich,

You say that Digging Dog is looking for a new stock plant. Are they looking for a larger plant, or would they take a rooted cutting? I'd be more than happy to give them one in exchange for a cutting in return if mine should die. Do you have a contact there? It's a shame that an easy to propagate plant is essentially unavailable in this country.

This is my largest one at the moment:

My plant is outside in an area that gets full sun in the morning , full shade in the afternoon. It is surrounded by Passifloras (Tacsonias) that have the worst spider mite problems of all my plants. So far the Salvia has been OK, although it has had a few. Slugs and Snails love the cuttings.

I just won a small S. dombeyi plant on eBay! The seller is new, so we shall see what I get...

Argh, my S. dombeyi arrived today, purchased on eBay, and was poorly packed and therefore broken. The good news is that it is still looking pretty good (it didn't travel far), and so I will try to re-root it. There are hardly any roots there, so I think the seller put the cutting up for bid way too early. Wish me luck.... grrrr.

I have never seen any salvia this large. Does anyone know where to buy this plant? I checked ebay but nothing was available.