Lyre-leaf sage

Salvia lyrata is a perennial herb of the Lamiaceae family, growing 30 to 75 centimetres tall from a stout rhizome, with a flat basal rosette of distinctive deeply pinnatifid to lyrate leaves 5 to 20 centimetres long whose terminal lobe is largest and rounded and whose secondary lobes are smaller and irregular; the leaf surface is often suffused with maroon or purple, especially in cooler weather, and is softly hairy. The square, glandular-pubescent flowering stem rises from the rosette in spring and bears only a few pairs of much-reduced cauline leaves before terminating in an interrupted, narrow racemose inflorescence of widely spaced whorls. Each two-lipped tubular corolla is pale lavender-blue to violet, 2 to 3 centimetres long, with a small upper lip and a broader, drooping three-lobed lower lip, and contains two fertile stamens. The fruit is a cluster of four small, smooth, brown nutlets enclosed in the persistent ribbed calyx. Native to eastern and central North America, it inhabits dry open woods, fields, lawns, roadsides and sandy clearings.