By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on September 17, 2004
Big red sage (Salvia penstemonoides) is a tall perennial favored for its burgundy-red flowers, long bloom period, appeal to hummingbirds, and adaptability to a variety of garden conditions. Nowadays it is common to see this Central Texas endemic plant in flower gardens all over Texas, Big red sage even grows in California gardens. Twenty years ago no one grew big red sage.
This salvia was unknown in the nursery trade, and botanists suspected that it was extinct.
The March/April 1985 issue of the Native Plant Society of Texas Newsletter included an article by Manuel Flores describing the rarity of Salvia penstemonoides and pleading with readers to report any plants they might find to Geyata Ajilvsgi. Flores listed the few occurrences of big red sage documented since it was first collected by Ferdinand Lindheimmer in June 1849.
During 1849, Lindheimmer was the guest of John Meusebach, when the founder of Fredericksburg lived temporarily 20 miles north of San Antonio at a site called Comanche Springs. “Comanche Springs” does not appear on modern maps, but Flores wrote that the locality is thought to be near the headwaters of Salado Creek in far northern Bexar County, within today’s Camp Bullis. Interestingly enough, there is a Meusebach Creek that also heads at a spring in the same area. Meusebach Creek flows into Cibolo Creek only five or six miles from the headwater spring. That might explain why one of the four herbarium specimens from Lindheimmer’s June 1849 collection is labeled “Cibolo.”
It seems very possible that all these specimens were collected in norther Bexar County, although the Texas A.&M Bioinformatics Working Group attributes two “Comanche Springs” plants to Comal County and the “Cibolo” specimen to Guadalupe County.
Other herbarium specimens preserved at the Missouri Botanical Gardens were collected from Wilson County in 1879; Kerr County in 1894 and 1943; Gillespie County about 1897; Wilson County in 1879; and Kendall County in 1916, 1940, and 1941. At one time big red sage ranged over
ten-county area centered by Kendall County.
Five years before Manuel Flores wrote the NPSOT Newsletter article asking members to be on the lookout for big red sage, Marshall Enquist had identified this salvia up a canyon in Bandera County. Those were the only Salvia penstemonoides that Enquist found, and he did not include this species in his book “Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country.” After the book was published in 1987, Enquist still wanted to add big red sage to his photo collection. He called Patty Leslie (now Pasztor) at the San Antonio Botanical Center to see if he could photograph some in her collection. She told him the Center had none, because Salvia penstemonoides probably was extinct, and the last known specimens were seen in 1946 in Verde Creek south of Kerrville.
During the spring of 1987, Enquist with other botanists revisited the Bandera County canyon to verify that Salvia penstemonoides indeed still existed. They found a dozen plants of the “long-lost” big red sage at three sites in that canyon.
Meanwhile, Dan Hosage, owner of Madrone Nursery near San Marcos, had found a population of big red sage in Frederick Creek at Boerne in 1986. This population contained hundreds of plants. Hosage gathered seed, and his nursery was the first to offer big red sage. Within a few years, seeds of big red sage were passed among lovers of native plants, and the plant was raised in botanical centers and private gardens.
In 1988 Marshall Enquist discovered another Kendall County population of big red sage on a bluff of Big Joshua Creek. In 1988 there were 25 plants at that locality, but by 1991 there were only three plants. Today there are none.
The Frederick Creek population has been greatly reduced in recent years. This year, however, Patty Leslie Pasztor discovered a sizable stand of big red sage on Cibolo Creek in Kendall County. This may be the most viable natural population of Salvia penstemonoides existing today.
“Kendall County Big Red’s Last Stand?” to be continued next month.
