The scientific name of this plant is salvia patens but my family typically calls these purple flowers blue salvia. Granted, we might be dealing with different varieties, but whenever that’s just what we’ve always called them. The fact that they continually bloom throughout the season makes them even more attractive for home gardeners like us.
One gardening website listed salvia patens as the “truest, bluest blue in the plant world”. I have to say that I agree. This vintage book plate image shows them a bit more purple than what I’m used to seeing. But, as you can see, these flowers are quite striking for the contrast of the flowers against the green foliage.
This is a nice-sized purple flower image. I was able to clean it up and resize it so that it will print on a four inch by six inch card.
This flower drawing is from an 1839 edition of Paxton’s Magazine of Botany and was drawn by Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874-1927).
This image is copyright free and in the public domain anywhere that extends copyrights 70 years after death or at least 120 years after publication when the original illustrator is unknown.
