Plant · P-588

Pineapple Sage

Salvia elegans

Pineapple Sage is a Mexican and Guatemalan perennial whose crushed leaves carry a genuine pineapple scent, used fresh or dried to flavor cold drinks, fruit salads and savory dishes, with edible flowers too. Its red tubular flowers are a strong hummingbird draw while bees handle the pollinating, and it holds up to summer heat well since it comes from tropical latitudes at high elevation. Where winters stay mild it keeps a semi-woody framework year-round; where they don't, it dies back and resprouts from the roots each spring, though hard winter wet will kill it outright. It spreads by underground runners into slowly widening clumps, so an established planting benefits from yearly division or root-pruning at the edge.