Leslie, I don't agree with what the nursery told you. I have similar leaves this spring on my pears and they all formed well after frost danger had passed during a period when my apples had a lot of fireblight. In seeing many such leaves over the years I have rarely seen the firelight progress on them, there was not enough of an infection for the disease to propagate. One thing they could be correct about is there is some chance it is frost damage. Scott

Lovely bloom. You certainly showed restraint. Sounds like she has an amazing collection. If you go again and she allows you to take pics I'd love to see her plants. I found a nursery in Stuart, FL last week. While walking around I found what I thought was another part of the nursery filled with DR's. Some must have been quite old as they were taller then me with caudexes a couple feet in diameter. It turns out that it wasn't part of the nursery but is space rented by what I was told is an eccentric older lady who refuses to sell any of her plants. Considering that all I saw were single pink blooms I thought that was kind of odd. It was where the seed pod ended up in my purse ; )

Gayle, are you somewhere in Southeastern Virginia, near Richmond or Hampton Roads? What is your soil type, and did you fertilize or work in humus in some form, or use some kind of humus-generating mulch like hardwood bark? Also, what is your exposure to sun and wind? If they lasted 3 to 5 years, they count as hardy. To keep some perennials going, they need to be divided and replanted. As the plant grows, it adds fresh layers of active tissue, with older, inactive tissue in its core. After a while, the accumulation of dead tissue becomes a breeding ground for pathogens and the vascular system has a much harder time connecting the roots to the leaves. The roots also have to travel further to find essential nutrients. This is the natural process, and Salvias overcome this by growing stolons or by having low, long branches layer themselves in new locations. It's the interaction of this maturation process with your microclimate and environment that needs attention.

spiced, I do know that there were dark colored varieties here in the US back in the mid to late 1800's. At another site there's a long discussion about the variety True Black Brandywine and Tom Wagner also contributed some info about known maroon, dark colored varieties present here in the US long ago, and maybe not that long ago. I can't transfer that thread here b'c GW doesn't allow for other message sites to be posted here and in transferring it it's ASAP known b'c of the formatting, which is different than here. Keith, you've also showed pictures of dark colored accessions from the Rick Center. Do you know where they were from? I know, I know, I could go look but you know the PGRC site so much better than I do that you could do it much quicker. Speaking to just one comment made in an above post, Craig LeHoullier got the variety now known as Cherokee Purple from J D. Green of TN and it had no name. John had told Craig that the woman he got it from said that it had been grown by the Cherokee. Craig just used the info he was given and at firat called it Cherokee Brick Red, which unfortunately is still listed in the SSE YEarbook, and then changed the name to Cherokee Purple. All attempts for John to track down the lady who gave him him the seeds have failed, so no other info is known. At yet another message site a woman from NC said she had seeds directly from some local Cherokee and was offering seeds. I'm growing it out this summer as is Craig, but not holding my breath b'c she also says she has the only this and that variety as an original, which I know to not be true. Oh well. I would hope that some of the researchers could look at some of the black accessions from the PGRC, b/c it might be useful. When I have time I'll try to transfer here at least the names of the dark colored varieties known from the early to mid 1800's, but alas, I think all of them are now extinct, but were described in various publications, some of which were cited in that thread elsewhere. To me it's perfectly possible that what the Cherokee were growing could well have been one of those dark colored varieties known to be in the US in the 1800's. Additionally, as spiced has already mentioned, it was the Spanish who first distibuted seeds, from Mexico, to the Caribbean and Spain and also to the Phillipines, all on their trading routes at the time, which introduces yet another slant to this interesting story. The Crimean region has long been thought to be the source of the original dark colored varieties, and I think that's up for reconsideration as well. Right now I'm in my medieval mystery reading mode but can switch ASAP to any tomato mystery mode quickly, and have. LOL Carolyn