Salvia funerea

Salvia funerea is a shrub that may exceed a meter in height. It is densely branched, and the branches are densely covered in white, wooly hairs. The leaves are 9 to 20 mm long, have short petioles, and are generally deciduous. The leaf blade is shaped more or less ovate, with spines at the tip and sometimes on the margins.

There are generally 3 flowers emerging in the axils of the sharply-toothed leaves. The flowers have a calyx 4.5 to 6 mm large, with 5 lobes that are shaped triangular, and tipped with spines. The corolla tube is 12 to 16 mm long, colored violet, with the stamens and style included (not projecting beyond the mouth of the corolla).

This species was described in 1908 by Marcus E. Jones based on a specimen collected in Inyo County, California.{{Cite journal|last=Epling|first=Carl|date=February 1938|title=The Californian Salvas. A Review of Salvia, Section Audibertia|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2394478|journal=Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden|volume=25| issue=1 |pages=95–188| doi=10.2307/2394478 | jstor=2394478 }} The specific epithet, "funerea", relates to where the plant was first found, in the Funeral Mountains along the California-Nevada border. It is closely related to Salvia greatae.{{cite book|last=Jaeger|first=Edmund C.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5xxCG3OfLO8C&pg=PA222|title=Desert Wild Flowers|publisher=Stanford University Press|year=1940|isbn=978-0-8047-0365-9|authorlink=Edmund Jaeger}}

The chromosome number is 2n=64.{{Cite web|last=Averett|first=Deborah Engle|date=2012|title=Salvia funerea|url=https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/eflora_display.php?tid=43058|access-date=January 5, 2022|website=Jepson eFlora|publisher=Jepson Flora Project}}

The plant can be found in dry alkaline washes with limestone soils and on the limestone cliffs of narrow canyons. It is distributed throughout the western slopes of the Amargosa Range (the Funeral Mountains, Black Mountains, and Granite Mountains), in Titus Canyon in the Grapevine Mountains, and in the northern Panamint Range in Grotto and Mosaic Canyons. Most populations are within Death Valley National Park, in Inyo County, California and Nye County, Nevada.

This species is found in association with Creosote bush scrub (Larrea and Ambrosia), and is often found with Atriplex hymenelytra, Bahiopsis reticulata, Encelia farinosa or Encelia actoni, and Eucnide urens.

This species is regarded as unsuitable for cultivation, due to its need of very restrictive habitat conditions, which are limestone cliffs or alkaline desert washes with limestone soils.{{Cite web|last=Wilson|first=Bert|date=2012|title=Salvia funerea, Death Valley Sage|url=https://www.laspilitas.com/nature-of-california/plants/3479--salvia-funerea|access-date=January 5, 2022|website=Las Pilitas Nursery|publisher=Las Pilitas Horticultural Treatment}}

{{Reflist}}

• Mojave Desert Wildflowers, Jon Mark Stewart, 1998, p. 183 {{ISBN?}}

• [http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/get_JM_treatment.pl?4745,4865,4877 Jepson Manual Treatment of Salvia funerea]
• [http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=SAFU2 USDA Plants Profile for Salvia funerea]
• [http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?query_src=photos_index&where-taxon=Salvia+funerea UC CalPhotos gallery of Salvia funerea'']

{{commons category|position=left|Salvia funerea}}

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funerea

Category:Flora of the California desert regions

Category:Flora of Nevada

Category:Natural history of the Mojave Desert

Category:Death Valley National Park

Category:Panamint Range

Category:Natural history of Inyo County, California

Category:Natural history of Nye County, Nevada

Category:Endemic flora of the United States

Category:Flora without expected TNC conservation status

{{Salvia-stub}}