| Author | L. | |
| Distribution | Present over nearly all of the Piedmont, and at least in the central and southern Mountains; seemingly absent from the northern Mountains and the extreme northwestern Piedmont. Not found in the Coastal Plain.
This is a mostly Southern species, found north to MD, northern VA, and KY south to northern FL and northern MS. | |
| Abundance | Infrequent to locally fairly common in the eastern and central Piedmont, mostly uncommon in the southwestern Piedmont and southern half of the Mountains. The website editors have suggested a State Rank of S3S4, as S3 is overly conservative. | |
| Habitat | This species requires high pH soil, usually in dry to somewhat mesic conditions. It occurs in glades and barrens, openings in upland woods, often where rocky, and wooded borders. |
| Phenology | Blooms from April to June, and fruits from May to July. | |
| Identification | This is a medium-sized herb, growing to about 1-1.5 feet tall, mostly unbranched or with basal branches. There are no basal leaves; the stem leaves are relatively few, in pairs, each one being widely ovate to deltoid, about 3 inches long and about 2 inches wide, with weakly serrated margins. The leaf base is truncate, and then narrowed to the stem. The inflorescence is a raceme at the top of the stem, about 4-5 inches long, with numerous layers or small whorls of flowers, each flower being violet-blue and about 1/2-inch long. The lower lip is strongly extended past the upper as a tongue, with white markings in the middle of this lip. The species might resemble a skullcap (Scutellaria) to some people, but Salvia species have a short upper lip that does not form a hood. This can be a very difficult species to find if you confine activities to acidic soils, but it is often present in many Piedmont natural areas that contain "prairie plants" and circumneutral soil. A colony of these plants can be quite showy, especially as there are not that many spring-flowering species with violet-blue racemes in its dry, high pH habitats. | |
| Taxonomic Comments | None
| |
| Other Common Name(s) | None | |
| State Rank | S3 [S3S4] | |
| Global Rank | G5 | |
| State Status | | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | | |
| USACE-emp | | |
