Gardener's Guide to Growing Salvias

Almost all that we know about the genus Salvia before the eighteenth century has come down to us because of belief in the medicinal virtues of S. officinalis (common sage) and S. fruticosa (Greek sage). That belief was not unfounded in fact, since modern biochemical studies have established that some of the constituent compounds in the volatile oils that are characteristic of many members of the genus do indeed have antibacterial activity. The use of the foliage in compresses for the treatment of wounds and injuries is recorded by a number of writers in ancient Greece and Rome, and their authority was widely respected by practitioners of medicine in Europe and the Middle East up to the nineteenth century. Those who wrote of sage and its medicinal properties, and whose writings have survived, are Theophrastus (c372-287BC), Pliny the Elder (AD23-79) and - most importantly - the Sicilian Dioscorides who wrote De Materia Medica in about AD64. His account of over 500 plants became the principal source in Europe of information on herbs and their uses until Elizabethan times. Older than the written records, by over a thousand years, is the identifiable representation of S. fruticosa (Greek sage) on a fresco at Knossos, Crete, which has been dated at about 1400BC. This is another indication of the respect in which Salvia was held for its medicinal properties in the days of classical Greece. The Latin name Salvia was first used by Pliny and is directly derived from the verb salvere, to heal. And heal - or at least assist in healing - sage almost certainly would have done in appropriate cases: claims for its properties other than healing, for example as an aid for conception or for 'bringing down the courses of women' or 'the treatment of epilepsy' are very much open to question. It can quite safely be assumed that the Romans brought sage to Britain (AD43-410), and we have one piece of evidence that it was known and valued in Anglo-Saxon times. The Benedictine monk Aelfric (cAD955-1010) was a major literary figure of his day, writing in both Latin and Anglo-Saxon. In AD955 he compiled a list of over 200 trees and herbs, among them sage, in his Colloquy (Nominum Herbarum). The monastic tradition of cultivation and use of herbs about which Aelfric wrote must date even further back. A ninth-century plan for the ideal monastery and its associated gardens shows the medicinal (or physic) garden in the form of a square comprising 16 beds, one for each herb included, one of which is sage. Around the beginning of the sixteenth century, sage was included in the 'Fromond List', in a cookery book, the property of Thomas Fromond, of Carshalton in Surrey. The 'List' comprises 138 'herbys necessary for a garden'. About 25 years later, sage was mentioned in Bancke's Herbal (AD1525), the first to be printed in English. The first enumeration and description of a number of Salvia species came in 1597 with the publication of the most famous of British herbals: The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes by John Gerard. This work is a masterpiece for the grace of its language and the quality of its illustrations. However, much of its content was obtained, without acknowledgement, from an original work by Dodoens, a Belgian botanist. In the herbal, Gerard described nine sages, four under that name and five under clary. One of the species is S. officinalis, and Gerard was clearly familiar with variegated forms, for he wrote 'We have in our gardens a kind of Sage, the leaves whereof are reddish, part of these red leaves are striped with white, other mixed with white, green and red, even as nature list to plaie with such plants.' The two British native species, S. pratensis and S. verbenaca are also described, the former as mountain sageSutton, John is the author of 'Gardener's Guide to Growing Salvias', published 2004 under ISBN 9780881926712 and ISBN 088192671X.