Native plant identification key for the
Palos Verdes Peninsula, California


Leaves elliptic (symmetrical oval) to oblong-elliptical (oval but with nearly parallel margins), green (can be yellowish-green, especially on top, or greyish-green, especially on underside), upper surface rugose (crinkled), lower surface can be faintly woolly (tomentulose), a bit glandular/sticky, petioles (leaf stalks) <1.2 cm long or subsessile (seeming not to have petioles), prominent mid-vein, margins crenulate (small rounded teeth or lobes), base tapered and tip obtuse (rounded), ~2-6 cm long; flowers irregularly 2-lipped, the lower lip almost as long as the corolla tube (~1.2 cm) and the upper lip 2-lobed, with stamens and style slightly exserted (sticking out) past the corolla. Flowers are pale blue to white, sometimes lavender or rarely pale pink, in compact round whorls ~1.5-4 cm wide, which are strung out along an axillary stem about every 2-6 cm. Each round flower cluster has a whorl of bracts immediately below, which look like rigid-tipped ovate (egg-shaped) leaves ~0.5-1 cm long. Blooms April to June. Fruit is a nutlet ~2-3 mm long, usually brown. Plant is a shrub 1-2 m high, loosely branched with somewhat stiffly hairy stems. It can be variable in appearance because it hybridizes with other sage species. It is common on dry slopes and terraces below 1200 m in California sage scrub and chaparral in the Central Coast, Transverse, and Peninsular ranges from the Bay Area to Baja California.

Salvia mellifera (Lamiaceae aka Labiatae): black sage


First placed on web: 08/05/11
Last revised: 08/056/11
Christine M. Rodrigue, Ph.D., Department of Geography, California State University, Long Beach, CA 90840-1101
rodrigue@csulb.edu

The development of this key was partially funded through the Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Program (Award #0703798) and through a course of re-assigned time provided by the CSULB Scholarly and Creative Activities Committee. Thanks also to the students in sections of biogeography, introductory physical geography, GDEP, and LSAMP for "test-driving" various editions of this key.