PlantFiles: Pineapple Sage
Salvia elegans

This plant has been enjoying southern exposure, by the deck for the past three years. The soil was enriched with a
good fertilizer based potting soil. It grows about 4 feet by 4 feet and loads up with red blooms in October. We whack it down through the winter, but it happily sprouts up lots of new stems in spring and grows like mad. Those sprouts will quickly have aerial roots at the base. If the 3 foot sprouts are snatched off from the base root, then the aerial roots will easily allow the detached stem to take hold and grow. The soft fuzzy green leaves look pretty next to the cool blue-green leaves of the siberian iris. It is a fantastic hummingbird plant. In our area it is surviving the winters, but some our other pineapple sage in less protected locations have not survived the North Alabama winters. Anyone hoping to have it survive zone 7a winters, might want to be sure to try it against a southern wall. Cutting it to the ground in fall and adding a mulch layer might also be helpful.

Please help!

I just got a Pineapple Sage out here in Korea... Unfortunately, it has started to display speckled leaves There are brown / black spots on the leaves.

Does anyone know what this might be from? Would really appreciate any advice you can offer.

Gavin

I have grown this for years here in Arlington, Texas, for the fragrance and brilliant red autumn flowers. Here it must usually be grown as a tender perennial and rarely survives winters. Also it is very sensitive to drying out and to soggy soil or overwatering. Nonetheless, it's well worth growing, as a successful planting produces a brilliantly flowered butterfly magnet with very pleasant pineapple-scented foliage.

I´m new to growing Herbs, not doing too badly for a newbie. One of my absolute favorites in my Herb Garden is my Pineapple Sage. I LOVE it in Salsa, especially in sweet/fruit varieties, I also use it in Pasta Salads even Chili as an accompaniment to my Mexican Sage...I look foward to trying the Pineapple Sage Pound Cake in the recipe above. I don´t understand why it isn´t used more widely with Chefs ? Many things taste sooooo much better when it is added to the Recipe!!

I just replanted mine in a bigger pot. I thought I was doing everything right, but days after I repotted, the leaves started turning brown. Now, three weeks later, it is completely dead....so sad :(

I am surprised by the postings that say this plant is drought-resistant. I bought it through eBay because the seller also said that. However, it takes only a day without water for this plant to wilt in my patio planter tub. Also, the seller had to send me a replacement TWICE because it had such a hard time making the trip; the first 2 were wilted to the point of not being revivable before I could even plant them. I've now had the surviving plant for a couple of years, and it does fine -- but only if I don't let it get dry. Maybe it's the lack of dew in these here parts? I live in zone 10, and the plant gets full sun only half a day -- but that sun is strong. I know it wouldn't want full shade, though. So what's a southern California mother to do?

About one month after re-potting (and taking it out of that crowded commercial greenhouse) my Salvia elegans has taken off like crazy... no stems are visible through the thick foliage. One thing though is that I find i need to water it heavily up to three times a day on hot days, sometimes only to come out the next morning and find it dried up and wilting! this plant drinks like a fish!

Love this plant but I lose every one of them due to some insect that invades the hollow stems. Small white bug, looks sort of like an ant or termite of somekind. Afraid to use insect spray since it does attract hummingbirds.

this is a great plant for its smell and foliage. It smells and tastes like pineapple ! great plant im not sure about its hardiness ,but a few of my neighbors have them from a few years ago and there doing great!

I love how this plant smells! It is a bit delicate, however. Last fall, just as it was starting to bloom we had a cold snap where it dropped to the low 20's overnight. I brought it in the house as soon as I saw it that morning. I watered it and left it in the house in the hope that it wouldn't die. The poor thing went into shock and turned brown and lost all its leaves. I thought it had died, and gave up and moved it to my potting bench in the garage for throwing it out later and forgot about it. A couple of weeks later I saw it and it had leafed out again! So, I brought it in the house and overwintered it in my south-facing office room. I just transplanted it into a nice big pot and put it back outside and it's doing quite well. I've been moving it in and out to give it a chance to gradually adjust to the cool (but not freezing) nights.
When I transplanted it, I accidentally broke off a few shoots so I put them in water in hopes that they'd root. Not only have they rooted, but they've grown a couple of inches and are blooming! The main plant doesn't even have buds.

I love Pineapple Sage! It is one of the first things to show green in spring here and grows beautifully all summer. By the time it blooms in late Aug. early Sept., it is huge! How beautiful it is covered with bright red flowers that the hummingbirds can not resist. I love to sit in my garden and watch them swarm the plant. I also love to show visitors to my garden how to crush the leaves and smell the fresh pineapple smell. It is so easy to propagate as well, I have new plants come up voluntarily every spring. If you get a chance to grow this plant, you should it gives oout nothing but pleasure.

This is the third year this plant has come back in my garden. I guess it's true that plants can't read zone maps as I'm in zone 7b and it's hardy to zone 8. It gets better & bigger every year! It's super easy to grow, smells wonderful & the hummers adore it! What else is there?

Pineapple sage blooms all year long in my backyard here in San Francisco. I have spread it by simply sticking cuttings into the ground... It also reseeds like crazy; there are many new plants growing nicely now in late April under my oldest one (2+ years old.) This oldest one is floppy, but I tie it to the fence. The lower stems are woody & bare now, but the new young ones beneath it are almost tall enough now to cover the old one's bare lower stems. The hummingbirds love it - I see and hear them so often, sipping from its long scarlet blooms. The scent is so fantastic, too. Such a wonderful plant.

I grew Pineapple sage as an annual, and kept it two years by growing cuttings indoors during the winter. It's a wonderful, fast-growing bushy plant, and cuttings root very easily.

I have two groupings of three plants each in different areas of my garden. One group has part shade exposure, the other has full sun (morning sun, afternoon shade). The full sun group grew to about 4 feet tall, and began blooming in October. The part shade group grew to about 5 feet tall and began blooming in late November.

I love that this plant blooms so late in the season. When everything else is going dormant, the Pineapple Sage really shines. The bees and hummingbirds sure do appreciate these flowers- there are not many flowers available on other plants in late fall.

In my garden, these plants like a good deep drink once a week, although if the weather is hot, they will let me know that they're thirsty by dramatically drooping and curling their leaves. In the hottest part of the summer, it's not unusual for them to need to be watered 2 or 3 times a week.

I planted a couple this year in May in our sage patch (Minneapolis zone 4 + with urban heat bubble microclimate.). It is very aromatic grew about 3 feet in a season .The plant is thirsty and needs daily waterring in the heat of July. I repotted the outdoor plants about 9/15 in two large containers and left them in the community garden for a few more weeks before transferring them to south and west facing windows at my home and office. With extra plant lights and religous watering they appear to have accepted the demotion to house plants. The little new leaves smell the most pineapply. When they bloom next I intend to try the bread recipe above.

I love Pineapple Sage, but it's not hardy here, have to plant it every year. Love the flowers and the scent of the leaves. Have to start planting it in the ground, maybe it would bloom sooner, because I have been planting it in 20" containers. Wish it would bloom alot sooner too and longer for my area.

Summer of 2006, I had 'Golden Delicious' Pineapple Sage and the red Pineapple Sage in potted containers. 'G D' is beautiful also!

We live in Massachusetts, z6a-b. We bought the plant as a little thing, at a garden center because the leaves were so fragrant. And it had a beautiful red flower ... that was in May. We planted it, waiting for the red flowers. It grew and grew, to huge proportions ... still waiting for the red flowers. Then in October it started to bloom. What a wonderful surprise. Our little plant is now a bush with abundant stems of red flowers. Incredible as it may seem, we've had two hard frosts but our salvia elegans is as vigorous as ever. We love this plant, and will try to overwinter it indoors.

I love my Pineapple Sage here in Fayetteville, NC. I have started it from little shoots around the base of the plant. I have three in my yard and plan to share with others. This year it seemed a bit leggy; however, so was the coleus. No big deal ... it is blooming now and I'll let it collect leaves then mulch it. Next year, I'll probably try a little fertilizer as I didn't fertilize at all this year. I'm also going to try to put it with various velvet sages. This year I had the pineapple sage growing about two bush lengths away from a purple velvet sage and decided right then and there that next year, they will be together ... the colors will be outrageous! I'll put some red velvet with it.

I'm smitten. I got one off the "nearly dead" clearance table and plunked it in the ground just to see what would happen. It was mixed in with a bunch of other plants that were doing well next to the gravel driveway/picket fence (not the most hospitable environment) so I never really paid attention until (suddenly!) it bloomed in beautiful clear red. I'm going to try to cheat a zone or two by moving it up against the south side of the house in the herb garden...... since it works for the rosemary I'm hoping it'll work for this plant too. I figure it's airy enough that it won't crowd out the parsley and the hummingbirds and I will be thrilled if it comes back. If this doesn't work I'll definitely grow it as an annual (en masse) next year.

I grew pineapple sage in my zone 6a/b. I planted it near my house foundation, slightly protected by a lilac. It died back but popped right up in the spring. It is now doing great in its second year. Mine is much larger than 48"!!! In 2005 it got to 3.5' and this year it is about 4' tall by 2' wide. I tried one in a container, but it never returned and didn't do as well as when in the ground.

I bought this from a nursery as a small plant in the late spring. It is HUGE now and more of a bush than not! It hasn't bloomed yet but I look forward to that in the next couple of months!

Lovely plant but requires more watering than I give my garden. Constantly wilted in hot weather.

I love this plant. I planted it a few years ago and it grew nicely in full sun. One fall day I looked out and I was pleasantly surprized by a profusion of red flowers. I enjoyed the flowers and an occasional hummingbird until the first frost when it completely died. One of my favorite annuals. I will try to save seeds this year.

I live in deep south Texas where its hot most of the year and for Spring I got 7 little pots of Red Salvia and I can say they are flowering and doing pretty good under the Sugarberry tree..something I did not think it was going to do.

This is an annual in my part of the world, but I still like to grow it. It flowers late in the summer for me. I like to just sniff the crushed leaves, so refreshing!
Here is a recipe I like to share with you all.

Pineapple Sage Pound Cake Recipe
The bright red flowers adds that bit of wow to this cake!

1 cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup honey
5 eggs
2 tablespoons chopped pineapple sage leaves (the small, new leaves are best)
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped pineapple sage flowers, if available
1 teaspoon grated lemons, rind of
4 tablespoons well drained crushed pineapple
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups flour

Makes 1 loaf or 4 miniature loafs

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Grease and flour four miniature loaf pans*.
Cream the butter and sugar until very light and fluffy.
Beat in the honey.
Add the eggs one at a time, making sure to beat for one minute after each addition.
Beat in the sage leaves, flowers, lemon peel, and crushed pineapple.
Stir the dry ingredients together and add to the butter mixture.
Fold these together gently, until just blended.
Pour into loaf pans.
Bake for approximately 45 minutes ( time for 1 loaf), or until golden brown (wooden pick inserted into center will come out clean).

In the late summer and fall, into early winter or the first good frost, one cannot have enough pineapple sage to take care of the passing mummers and b-fly's, and native b-fly's, moths, wasps and bees, and and who knows what all else. Comes back - usually - from the roots in the spring, esp if mulched or otherwise protected. My best is enmeshed with rootbound cocosmia. It tends sometimes rot in our winters that are wet, drainage is not good, a characteristic of lots of plants on the northshore of New Orleans. Pineapple sage has done better than any other savia species for me, even surviving being smothered by hundreds of pounds of pine tree tops from Katrina, and subsequent drought. It has not seeded for me. Although it is not native to this area, I consider it a welcome guest.

I no sooner got it in the ground with organic compost and some peat hummus than it was starting to flower. it is February 20 th here where I am in Pinellas County. It is a happy little plant. Am reading some comments on it getting 4 feet high. Please contact me with details. I was under the impression it stayed under 2 1/2 feet. If it does get huge like that I will put it elsewhere in the yard as a shrub. Thanks!

I love this sage! Its very aromatic and i love it better than the other sage plants. To me it was hard to find and when i found it, it was in a 6 inch container, early spring. I plan to buy more this coming spring, if i can find any. EVERY garderner should own at least one of these.

Beautiful late fall bloomer, with a profusion of bright red spikes at 2,700 feet near Nevada City, California. Has bloomed into December the last two years! 4-5 feet tall and wide after getting established.

Two thumbs up positive!! This plant did spectacular for me and what a surprise when I looked out my window and saw bright red blooms! I just had to brave the bughaven and go outside to snap some pictures! Awesome smell too!

I've grown this plant at least five years and although I occasionally lose a plant in one location, others in different parts of the yard always come back. It takes up a lot of space, but when it blooms in late summer, it is well worth it.

This plant grows as an annual here in my zone 5 garden and is very aromatic. It's leaves are great flavoring in tea or cooking. The flower spikes bloom in late summer to early fall and are a pretty red color.

I have the original plant bought over 3 yrs ago. I made cuttings that survived 2 winters and succesfully replanted in my garden.

Last winter, a bug I couldn't identify destroyed my cuttings. I said goodbye to my plant.

Surprise! The original plant was found sprouting from the root in April! It continues to grow!

I live in Marietta Ga, an area considered tender for pineapple sage.

I must add, the plant grows each year to be huge! The trunk of original plant must be almost an inch, and I had to stake from first yr planted. Rubbing the leaf produces a wonderful aroma too!

resqme1065

Pineapple sage is one of our favorite herbs in the garden. It has a vibrant green leaf and then sprouts a beautiful red flower. When you rub the leaves together you get a great aroma.

Great in the Japanese summer, heat brings out the smell nicely...

Great plant here in central MS. I do not cut the stems over the winter and it has returned for 6 years....it grows to be a five+ foot shrub by the end of the year and blooms in fall, and is spectacular. I grow it in a part shade, part sun situation. I does seem to self-sow and sometimes I'll find another plant in a nearby container.

I just love the smell of this herb. Just a little rub on the leaves will produce the sweet pineapple scent. I like it in teas and other culinary uses. Attractive leaves and flowers too.

I love the colour of the flower of this plant and I love the fact that it tolerates dry soils. Tough and hardy. Like most Salvias. pokerboy.

A very beautiful flowering tall shrub hardy from zone 7a and 7b southward. One of the most popularily known and grown plant in the South and one of the best plants for attracting hummingbirds and butterflies. This plant is great in full sun, where it can grow fairly quickly during the summer. It also does very well in partial shade with some sun!

Love the smell of it. The stems can be brittle and often break in strong winds. In some winters it has no problems with frosts, but in colder winters it gets knocked back.

This was my first year with this plant and I just love it. It was about 1 foot tall and 1 branch when I purchased it from Parks in the late spring, and now it is 4' tall and about 2' wide, it is in part shade, I was not expecting it to do so well, but I really love it.

I have rooted some cuttings so I can distribute a couple more over my yard and share with some neighbors, my cuttings rooted in a sunny window in about 7 days.

My plant grows next to an anise bush and a butterfly bush, there is also a don juan rose growing close by and these scents mixed together is heaven, I could not have planned my walkway any better, as it is it kind of happened by accident.

4-24-05
My plant has come back wonderfully I cannot wait for the bloom this year.

Has grown well in compact clay soil that has poor drainage. Smells great!

I tried this indoors originally, but it began to look very sickly, despite getting enough light. It was turning brown and wilting and I nearly threw it away… good thing I gave it one last chance by moving outside (in zone 9a). I also cut off one third of the plant (the worst of the damaged, ugly parts) and resolved to ignore it completely save watering it with my other herbs. It thanked me with new growth in a few weeks, and more after that. The plant has now restored enough of itself that I’ve cut off all of the brown parts and I am amazed that this is the very same plant I almost threw away—it looks lovely!

I suppose the moral of the story is natural sunlight for pineapple sage. Many other plants really love fluorescent lights (like many people have in their kitchens or offices), but not this one. If you want a fragrant herb in the kitchen where you can smell it all the time, this is not the one for you (I’d recommend chocolate mint).

this plant has come back after dying to the ground thru the winter. It is very full, about three or four feet wide and tall. It has spread and I have already divided it into four plants.
The red flowers are beautiful. Last summer it grew to about six feet tall. I have it planted in an area that stays somewhat moist. I have put one of the new clumps in a dry, full sun area to see how it does.

I have loved this plant since the autumn it turned into a "burning bush" in a back bed. For some reason, it has never survived the winter, although some of the other sages have been there for years. I replant pineapple sage as an annual each year. Perhaps this year I'll mulch with fall leaves as suggested in an earlier post; since the other sages receive a natural leaf mulch just from their location, maybe pineapple sage will manage to return next year on its own.

I always plant it somewhere in the back bed so I can see it from my window in autumn and be heartened by the glorious color.

I've had pineapple sage growing in my garden for several years. I have it planted in full sun and cut it back every fall and give it a blanket of either leaves or mulch after the first freeze. In the spring, when the rains start, I pull the leaves/mulch away and it springs right back to life. I have a fairly compacted clayey type soil but that doesn't seem to bother it.

In zone 10 this plant flowers with us from mid-Autumn all through Winter until I cut it back in Spring. The bright scarlet flowers are really welcome in the Winter garden.
The scent of the leaves is lovely, so plant it where you will brush against it.
It is very drought tolerant- but leggy in those conditions, better with moderate water.

My pineapple sage grew quite well through our cool and rainy Northcentral Florida, zone 8b, Summer this year, and is now gloriously in bloom in late October and early November. The heavy Summer rain made the three-foot-tall stems flop over, and they have now rooted, making a three foot square plant that started out last March as a small, 8" tall seedling bought from an herb booth at a plant fair.

I have grown this plant before in Florida so knew what to expect. The plant is just covered in brilliant red flower spikes that can be seen from across the garden. It is a butterfly magnet, especially for Cloudless Giant Sulphurs.

This sage will root in water, so it is easy to have them all over the garden. My one current large plant is in a perennial bed near a Brown Turkey fig tree underplanted with several different iris, with red antique roses on a trellis in the background, and other herbs, such as parsley, lovage, and valerian, all within a border of white flowered garlic chives. But the flowers of the sage can compete with even the wine red roses!

Although an annual here in z5b, Pineapple Sage is a lovely and dependable addition to the butterfly and hummingbird garden. Sadly, had to pull up the dying plant last week as temps are dropping now. Always one of the first annual herbs purchased in the spring here.

I grow lots of this plant. It is easy to propagate from cuttings or by division of its own self-rooting offshoots. It overwinters for me in pots under my outdoor deck in Bremerton, Washington, and actually flowered all last winter. It doesn't start putting on its best flowering until October or later.

In Florida, it does best in winter and early spring, and is not happy during the hot and humid summers.

Pineapple sage is an October showstopper here in Raleigh, NC (Zone 7b/8a). Beautiful, fragrant foliage throughout the growing season to 4' high by 4' wide by Sept. and, as its final hurrah, another foot added in all directions of the brilliant red flower spikes in October. A true traffic stopper on my street.

This plant is situated on a slope near the top of a large drainage ditch, in moderately rich, well drained soil.

My plant has been in the ground now for a third growing season and has wintered although is is very tender here. I winter it over by letting it 'catch' the fall leaves, leaving the leaves until late March and NOT cutting the plant back unless the temps drop below 20 degF. Then I cut the plant back to just below its 'leaf pile', piling more leaves on top to protect the hollow stems from moisture (and therefore from rot). So far this has worked - the plant survived long, cold winter (for NC) with a few nights down to 10degF. Come late March, removing the leaves and cutting the plant to the ground seems to work as it comes back, slowly, but comes back nonetheless.

A terrific plant.

Hummingbirds smother this plant with attention when they discover it in bloom.

Here in my USDA Zone 3 climate, I raise Salvia elegans as an annual, but it's a favorite of mine. I usually try to winter it over indoors and root cuttings in the spring.

Rub a leaf, then inhale the authentic smell of pineapples! Of all the aromatic plants this one must surely be the best. Fresh leaves can be put into summer fruit salads, used to decorate desserts or be added to jams, jellies or cream cheese for flavouring. Use dried leaves for potpourri mixes or for herbal butter and teas. Or just enjoy its beauty; in early summer the tender serrated deep green leaves are reward enough. But towards autumn the plant blooms with vivid, velvety tubular scarlet flowers. They have a mild flavour but can be used as decoration or garnish with food. In its native Mexico this plant attracts humming birds.

Common name refers to the scent of the foliage when crushed or bruised. Grown as a woody shrub in Zones 10-11, herbaceous perennial in Zones 8-9, and as an annual or greenhouse plant in colder zones.