Use GA-3 - try 375 PPM to start. Give good strong light, bottom heat at 78 F, make a very sharp draining mix in a shallow pan. Less than 12 hours of light will require supplement. These are not difficult if you give them exactly the right conditions.

Gibberellic acid is reported to work on seeds of the related S. sonomensis.

Some time ago, I tried it with a lot of Salvias (and Phlomis as well) and found it worked very well. I had access to a culture shaker table that swirled the seeds in the GA-3 solution for an hour. This caused the gelatinous coat on the Salvia seeds to wash off and the gentle bumping together of the seeds helped the GA-3 to penetrate. I planted the seeds the next day and got terrific results.

It improved the yield even on older seed, and gave just under 95% seedling germination yields of S. clevelandii and Phlomis species.

Thank you both for that. I forgot to ask in my original post, are these for autumn or spring sowing?

Spring. Trying for germination in falling light would not be easy - that is unless you have a very well controlled growing environment.

Thanks - all set to go now!

Rich, what concentration GA3 did you use? And do you know of a local source here in the Raleigh area or do you use a mail order source?

Ralph - try Carolina Biological in Burlington, NC or J L Hudson, Seedsman.

The link is for the paper that I accessed for my experiments. I'm pretty sure I used 100 ppm

Here is a link that might be useful: Gibberellic Acid Breaks Dormancy and Hastens Germination of Creeping Sage