Hi,
Nice plant and beautiful photography, but it appears the plant was mislabelled. Salvia whitehousei, a Texas native, is quite different in appearance:
http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/...
http://www.wildflower.org/gall...

Your plant looks like Salvia pratensis as a guess, though may well be some other species.

Lori

Oh wow--so it is!!!
so,
The plant came as Salvia dolichantha, a China native, which, when I typed that in led me to Salvia whitehousei via the synonym as listed. Seeing the other picture in the database under Salvia whitehousei sure didn't help anything either because it looks eerily similar to mine and nothing like Salvia whitehousei either

Thanks Lori

Well, I would have to differ in regard to the other entry resembling your plant... I suspect that one is the genuine Salvia dolichantha, the Chinese species. The flowers on yours seem to have a very different character from it... ?

oh and swearing and completely mortified
that is because I submitted the wrong one


You see it does resemble my plant, just not the (better) picture I put in of a different plant, under the twice wrong name. And this would really be funny if it weren't so humiliating

Oh, I see! No problem... yes, it DOES resemble THIS photo, just not the first one!

The first one is Saliva stepposa.
I requested that it be removed. Somewhere I do have a better picture of the nameless Chinese sage, but I'm not taking anymore chances to click the wrong thumbnail tonight. I'll just wait until there is a place to submit it if there ever is one.

Keen eye Lori, thanks much!

I moved it for you DD rather than delete it!

Okay,
Thanks Sue! Sorry for the mess-up

Not a problem at all, glad it got to it's correct entry.