Florida Wildflower Haiku & Art, Lyre Leaf Sage, Salvia lyrata

Florida Wildflower Haiku & Art, Lyre Leaf Sage, Salvia lyrata

Florida Wildflower Haiku & Art, Lyre Leaf Sage, Salvia lyrata by Kevin Songer

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native purple blooms
hummingbirds steal a sip and
chase off butterflies
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Lyre-leaf sage is a Florida native and drought tolerant wildflower I see growing across lawns, along roadsides, in fields, meadows and under the forest canopy.

Lyre-leaf sage leaves are lyre-like in shape with deep purple and green colorings. Their light blue flowers provide nectar for hummers and butterflies. The over-lapping leaves of adjacent lyre leaf sage plants keep other weeds down and provide a neat, well-cropped perennial native ground cover appearance. Lyre leaf sage has been one of my favorite and most reliable green roof plants.

Lyre leaf sage has also been used traditionally as a cancer cure. This healing practice was based on a theory that because the plant quickly spread, creating densely populated patches, it must be a natural cure for likewise rapidly spreading cancers. 

Lyre leaf sage is an amazing Florida native perennial, landscape or green roof plant superb in its attraction to pollinators, hummingbirds, bees and butterflies.

Top Ten Florida Green Roof Plants, Salvia lyrata, Lyreleaf Sage

You can not find a better green roof plant than Lyreleaf Sage, Salvia lyrata.  I love to see this very special native wildflower growing across rooftops.

Top Ten Green Roof Plants, Lyreleaf Sage, Salvia lyrata, evergreen beauty

Her evergreen foliage offers an exquisite blend of deep greens, purples and burgundy with leaves laying flat against the ground and flower stems extending vertically to about 18 inches (45 cm).  Note the lyre shaped leaf form.

Foilage - Top Ten Green Roof Plants, Lyreleaf Sage, Salvia lyrata, evergreen beauty

Flowers generally are a deep ocean blue but I have seen the occasional white colored flower populations.

Top Ten Green Roof Plants, Lyreleaf Sage, Salvia lyrata, evergreen beauty

Lyreleaf sage's ability to thoroughly cover open soil media keeps weeds at bay throughout the year.  A mature population of Salvia lyrata can provide a dense, luxurious appearance.

Florida Green Roof Plants, Lyreleaf Sage, Salvia lyrata, thick plantings

Lyreleaf sage transplants easily.  If you can not find the plant in a nursery then it is usually readily found in backyards and alongside the roadside in front of most vacant lots here in the southeast.  Just make sure that when transplanting you are not transferring root-knot nematodes from the ground up to your roof project (though the pests usually can not survive the temperatures on a roof).

Top Ten Green Roof Florida  Plants, Lyreleaf Sage, Salvia lyrata, burgundy and green

This special plant will provide you with many surprises.  She will be green most of the winter when other plants have that sleepy brown appearance and provides masses of bee and other pollinator attracting blooms when most other flowers are still just thinking about blossoming.

Top Ten Green Roof Plants, Lyreleaf Sage, Salvia lyrata, evergreen ground cover

Check out our previous posts about this special plant.  Read the Seeds for Green Roof Post about her also!  Planting this extremely hardy and drought tolerant species will pay off in big green roof successes.