I don't know which ones are "bush sages" so forgive me if I get off topic.
So far, a few are coming back that I didn't expect and some others that I was sure would return are showing nothing, but it's early (I hope).
I grew three seedlings from g. Cherry Queen last year and all three have come back even the little runt that I meant to dig up and winter over in my garage. It was a spindly little thing, only about eight inches tall and didn't bloom last year - So now I'll get to see what color the flowers will be later this summer. Cherry Queen has some new growth as well.
Nothing yet on greggi stampede Salmon, Navajo Rose, or Skylights Magenta
Nothing yet on Cerro Potosi.
One of my darcyi seedlings last year had purple/blue flowers and it has some new growth coming out at the base. It was heaved up out of the ground a little because of moles digging around it so I'm very surprised it lived.
No growth yet on my salvia darcyi but I'm pretty sure it will return.
Nothing yet on any of my guaraniticas but I'm still hopeful about those as well.

Please send an image of the darcyi with the blue/purple flower. It is probably a hybrid.

My purple/blue darcyi looked very much like guaranitica, both the leaves and the flowers. I will send you a photo when it blooms this summer. I try to be so careful with my seeds to make sure they don't get mixed up but I'm sure there could be a chance that a guaranitica seed got mixed in with my darcyi and maybe that's all it is. I would be interested to see what you think. I did try to hand pollinate darcyi with guaranitica so it's possible that it's a cross of those two. I hand pollinated it again last summer and have some seedlings now from darcyi but they're too small to tell whether they all look the same.

That would be an interesting cross.

This is very interesting indeed! Of course it is possible that a rogue seed found its way into the pot.

Darcyi has hybridised with microphylla and the pleasant result has been Silke's Dream. I took seed from Silke's Dream 2 years ago and got 2 interesting plants. One was like a vivid orange greggii...with small lime-green leaves, yet to be named, as really nothing that special, the other had huge pale pink flowers, and is a vigorous upright plant, it has been named 'Penny's Smile'. This could be a great introduction, but can only be truly propagated from cuttings. There is a photo of this on my site www.robinssalvias.com

3 years ago, I sowed some seeds of S.patens 'Guanajuato'...good germination, but one seedling was particularly vigorous and obviously not a patens. I grew this and it turned out to be a stunning form of S. guaranitica. This flowered all summer long, and grew to 6 ft in a short time. The foliage is different from other guaraniticas, but the large flowers seem to be the same. This has proved to be fairly hardy, and has not set any seeds. Sure, I may have had a guaranitica seed stuck to my finger which fell into the patens pot....but somehow don't think so, as I did not collect any guaranitica seed that year! But, it is a fabulous Salvia. I very much doubt if patens and guaranitica would hybridise....they are from different countries.....but I have heard that the Italian Salvia viscosa has hybridised with a South African species! Also, some marvellous hybrids from South African species have occurred in New Zealand and Australia.

There seems to be no end to hybrid possibilities, even though botanists are rightly searching for true species. Recent trips to Mexico have found numerous hybrids of littae/purpurea/iodantha, not to mention many different forms of polystachya, carnea, and myriantha.

Only professional botanists can positively identify these plants.

Other great hybrids are Salvia 'Waverly' and more so, Salvia 'Phyllis' Fancy'...the latter being superior. Waverly has pink flushes, and Phyllis has blue/lavender flushes. Both are supposed to be children of leucantha and chiapensis. I can see the resemblance to leucantha, but the chiapensis parent confuses me. Is it possible that the two alleged parents could produce hybrids with completely different coloured flowers?

I could go on for hours on this theme, but don't want to bore you all, probably already have!

Robin.

I am intrigued by the differences shown by hybrids when small, and especially when they grow under cool, low light conditions. I've observed that there is a similarity of Waverly with chiapensis under these conditions. The leaf texture, form of dentation, and vein coloration seem very similar.

My read of Phyllis' Fancy is that it arose on the UC Santa Cruz campus as a cross with urica or some other blue sage, though none was growing near it when it was discovered.

Some of the x jamensis forms show more greggii character under strong light and microphylla under low light conditions.

Sometimes, one parent can be pretty well subsumed into the other, such as Andy Maycen's Raspberry Truffle. It has the very dominant appearance and scent of gesneriiflora, and the mexicana parentage becomes obvious only when the regular mexicanas start to bloom. The flowers of RT appear at that time and do look like a merge of the two, larger than both. The flower is as long as gesneriiflora's, and mexicana broadens the tube and the lower lip. Blooming continues into the winter period well past the end of the mexicanas.

T. P. Ramamoorthy told me that salvias from different countries are more likely to cross, because they have more of a chance to share common pollinators and bloom periods. Don't forget that one can find populations of as many as eight different sages growing together in the wild and maintaining their identity. They do this by blooming at different times and by using different pollinators.

I collected S. puberula and S. mexicana back in 1991 on a trip with Manuel Flores off the Pan-Am highway in Hidalgo. They were growing fairly close to one another. In North Carolina, they did not cross, but Donna Dittmann in St. Gabriel (near Baton Rouge) found a hybrid that she calls Raven. It has the huge bracts and involucre of puberula and the flower color of mexicana.

Like Robin, I can go on forever on these hybrids.

The problem for me has been where to put all the possible hybrids. That problem seems to be solved this year and it may be time to do some more experimenting. There is an odd looking seedling from a 2 year Ginny Hunt seedlot of macrophylla upright growing in the basement. It has a bit heavier veining than the average macrophylla. It is probably nothing as most odd seedlings seem to turn out to be, but I'm curious.

I found some growth around the base of my darcyi plants yesterday.
Still nothing on my guaraniticas, greggi stampede Salmon, Navajo Rose, or Skylights Magenta.
Nothing yet on Cerro Potosi.

The perfect cross for my own yard would be anything that attracts hummingbirds and still gets though our winters.
I had a little more than two dozen darcyi seedlings this spring but I'm down to 14 now. I let them get too dry then we got a lot of rain and a few of the smaller ones drowned. I'll plant all of them so I can see if any are different from the parent. If they all look exactly like the species darcyi, I may assume that the one that looked like guaranitica last year was just a stray seed.
I have quite a few Cerro Potosi seedlings. I was hoping that one would be hardy for me so I collected seeds but so far it looks like the parent isn't returning.

Christie--- I dont have anything showing my skylights magenta which I think is also furmans red, also on my greggii primrose showing nothing, but I still have hope for them , but I do have some agastache and greggii to come to me yet.

I was really surprised this morning to discover flower buds forming on greggii x Cherry Queen. That is record early for any bush sage I've grown. It is in a very protected area and hardly suffered any winter die-back at all.