Coincidentally, I just sorted through my file of plant tags and found one for Purple Brazilian Salvia. Aha! I remember it from a couple of years ago. I changed that area over to tall red pentas last next year and don't recall pulling any salvia seedlings.

Although I didn't make cuttings from the purple one, I have propagated Dancing Flame salvia easily from cuttings. Some consider it a s. splendens and others a s. van houttei.

Michael, this isn't a direct answer-when are any of mine, lol-but Salvia splendens, along with Salvia farinacea, are the two ultra-common annual bedding plant Salvias of the north. As such, they are indeed propagated by seed in the greenhouses up here. I have loads of experience working with commercial greenhouses, and I've never seen vegetative propagation of that plant. Not at all saying it can't be done, but there you go.

We do, of course, have things up here like Salvia nemerosa, which are strongly perennial, and which are typically multiplied by simple division.

+oM

Since posting this I have noticed many typoes and I am hating my fat fingers right now. They are far more suited for an actual keyboard than a virtual one... but I digress... back to the salvia. While taking my cuttings this morning, I found a tag stuffed down the side of the pot. While the sale sign at the festival said "Purple Brazilian Salvia", the tag in the pot says "Salvia 'Amistad'". Looking up this name brings up Salvia guaranitica as the species and says it is perennial. Pictures of Amistad definitely look like my plant, so I am thinking the sale sign wasn't accurate.

Have you seen the flowers, Michael? Amistad is indeed purple and can easily be propagated from cuttings. I did this last year. Amistad is a perennial; I find that it grows quickly and gets quite tall. Mine do best if I am rather aggressive in dead-heading--although this isn't necessary. Pictures of Amistad

Looks a right worthy plant.

+om

Tom, what kind of light conditions did you have yours growing in? Floridata says S. guaranitica (not Amistad specifically) can handle Full-Sun to Part-Shade. The place I was thinking of putting mine I guess could be labeled Part-Sun. After a month or so, the spot will get sun from about 11 am to sunset. So it will be afternoon sun. There are other plants in the same bed that might add a little relief at certain points of the day, but I'm going to assume that it will be on it's own. Not likely, but I'm taking worst-case into consideration.

The majority of salvias do best in part shade. They can take some direct sun, but they will need a lot of water if they are out in the sun for long. I have three different places where I planted Amistad. The place they do best is on the east side of my house where they get perhaps three or four hours of sun a day and the rest is shade. I have one plant that is in more or less full sun for most of the day and it has struggled, but it is still alive and blooming.

Once again, the dichotomy between your FL conditions and those of my WI home is in play. We routinely plant such varieties in full, blazing sun. Pretty hard to beat them back once they get going. Now, I do have some S. nemerosa in part-shade, but that's not by design, but rather, the result of tree canopies expanding in this, a perennial composition. Salvias of every stripe are plants for full sun up here. YMMV.....and very likely does!

+oM

Yep. I wish I remembered if it was a UF show, a magazine or a book I read, but somewhere I 'heard': "In Florida, the tags in the stores that read 'Full Sun' should read 'Ready to Melt'."

These S. gauranitica cuttings sure are thirsty buggers. I decided to go with the simple, old cuttings-in-water method since I realized I had not done cuttings this way in at least two years, even though it's the easiest. So there's something to be said against ambitiously trying other methods. But I have to keep topping off the glasses they're in throughout the day as they soak up the water faster than I remember cuttings doing so.