During a visit to Goudini Spa (about 120kms from Cape Town) in 1998, Ernst van Jaarsveld of Kirstenbosch Gardens came across this most unusual Salvia. At first he thought it was a form of S. lanceolata sometimes occurring in inland valleys to the north of this site, but research and comparison with herbarium data, pointed to a new species, which he named Salvia thermarum. S. thermarum (also sometimes mistakenly called S. thermara ) produces abundant nectar and is pollinated by sunbirds. Its pale red flowers and red bracts make it a beautiful specimen for the front of the border.

Description: S. thermarum is an erect branched shrub, up to 1m in height with a stoloniferous base. The branches are dark green, up to 3 mm in diameter, the young stems are glandular hairy becoming smooth with age. The leaves are also dark green with purplish tips, no petiole, not fragrant when crushed, oblanceolate to linear oblanceolate, 20-35 mm x 15 mm, serrated at the apex and entire at base.

The inflorescence is a short dense raceme 80-10 mm long (not branched); 3 to 4 verticillasters –a whorl of flowers apparently of one cluster, but composed of two opposite axillary cymes, 2 flowered, pale red to deep salmon corollas, 40-50 mm long, with red bracts. S. thermarum could be easily confused with its relative S. granitica, a species confined to an area south of Citrusdal and the Caledon District. But the latter is a smaller shrub, with a mauve pink corolla, only 20 mm long and elongated racemes. uses: ornamental (dísznövény)