purple sage

American  

noun

1. a plant, Salvia leucophylla, of the mint family, native to California, having silvery leaves and purple spikes of flowers.

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Example Sentences

There are plugs of grasses and gallon pots of white sage, purple sage, California buckwheat, long-stem buckwheat, deerweed, narrow leaf milkweed and coyote bush.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 26, 2026

Instead of lawn or little potted palms around the pool, there are oversize stands of desperado sage, a fragrant hybrid between white sage and purple sage, growing so untamed they’re nearly spilling into the pool.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 30, 2024

Imbued with a heady pedigree and a peripatetic upbringing, Mr. Nichols evolved instinctively from a cosmopolitan New Yorker and world traveler to a Western writer of the purple sage.

From New York Times • Dec. 2, 2023

The episodes are surprisefully plotted and seek variety in the bizarre: next week a knight in armor rides out the purple sage and rams his lance through a stagecoach door.

From Time Magazine Archive

Slowly the green of Cottonwoods sank behind the slope, and at last a wavering line of purple sage met the blue of sky.

From Riders of the Purple Sage by Grey, Zane