From the classical Greek name teukrion, possibly after the Trojan king, Teucer.
Perennial, mostly aromatic herbs, shrubs and subshrubs. Leaves opposite, simple or shallowly divided, stalked, margin entire or variously toothed or cut. Flower clusters axillary or terminal in 2-6-flowered whorls. Flowers with calyx 2-lipped or tubular to bell-shaped, sometimes swollen at the base, 10-veined, teeth 5, mostly equal. Corolla 2-lipped, the upper one extremely reduced or absent, lower lip 5-lobed but the lateral ones often reduced or absent, the middle one entire, notched or divided. Stamens 4, protruding. Fruit of 4 smooth to rough nutlets.
Usually lime-loving plants grown for the interesting foliage and mostly pale violet, pink or white flowers. Rarely grown species include: T. aroanum Boiss., a small stoloniferous rock garden plant from Greece; the yellow-flowering T. flavum from the Mediterranean; T. polium L. subsp. pii-fontii Palau [T. majoricum Rouy] from the Mediterranean and W Asia, as the purple-flowered T. 'Purple Robe'; T. scorodonia L., Wood Sage, from Majorca, a stoloniferous subshrub, often as the cultivar T. 'Crispum Marginatum' which has small leaves, becoming purplish in winter, with crisped edges that are spotted with white; and T. subspinosum from Majorca, a shrub to about 0.5 m tall with short, spiny branchlets.
Herbs by seed, perennials by softwood and semi-hardwood cuttings and division.
Flowers with upper lip absent or much reduced.
About 300 species, cosmopolitan but concentrated around the Mediterranean and W Asia. Australia has 13 endemic species.
Codd (1977).
The range of species available varies and a key would therefore be of little value.
Source: (2002). Salvia. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 4. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 3. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.