We visited Cabrillo College's Salvia collection the other day and were stunned to see this plant. I had long wondered if this common garden plant (note the standard purple form behind) would ever produce a pure white flower & spike (another common form has white flowers, and purple calyxes). Now here it is. Ernie Wasson, the curator of the collection, said they were not yet a liberty to say where this trial plant had come from, or what it was called, but that as soon as patent issues in the US had been settled, they'd be able to propagate and sell this plant to the public.
This looks like what is being marketed as Salvia leucantha 'White Mischief' in South Africa, Australia, and Israel. In those countries there is another new cultivar of this species, 'Danielle's Dream', apparently from the same source, which has whitish spikes and flowers that are tinted pink. The white is not as clean - actually sort of grayish - which, combined with the pink, most people thought looked kind of 'creepy' (maybe is was too close to Halloween?).
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