鼠尾草,你是我最好的舞伴

The salvia is a member of the mint family, labiatae, which accounts for its square stems and textured, often fragrant foliage, and for those flowers that look like lips. Incredibly, more than 900 species flourish around the world. They grow in many forms, from delicate rock-garden plants with slender green leaves to six-footers with textured leaves in a range of shades, from chartreuse to dark hunter green, flowering in blues, purples, reds and even yellow.

　　Many are tropical and must be treated as annuals, but some are hardy enough to winter over, in the mid-Atlantic and tristate areas, especially in Zone 7, where winter temperatures rarely fall to zero.

　　I have a garden sage, Salvia officinalis, which has survived bitter winters, my neglect and the strangling vines of honeysuckle, to sprout its pleasingly rough gray-green leaves from woody branches. (The leaves are delicious in stuffing and pork dishes.) It has grown to the size of a bushel basket and sends up three-foot stems with fat oval flower buds that are an iridescent purplish white for a few days before they open their big purple flowers. I used to grow it with tricolor garden sage, which has pebbled variegated leaves of purple and green, edged with white. The two were a pleasing combination, but the tricolor conked out during the hard winter (variegated plants are a bit weak).

　　Another favorite is Mexican bush sage, Salvia leucantha, which some people call a bicolor because its white flowers are hugged by velvety light purple calyxes. It bloomed until frost, but like other tender salvias in this zone, succumbed to the snow and ice last winter.

　　鼠尾草屬于薄荷大家族，是唇形科的一種，莖呈方形，葉片紋理獨特，往往帶有香味，花朵呈唇形。令人難以置信的是，有超過900個鼠尾草品種生長于世界各地。它們形態(tài)各異，有的生有狹長綠葉，生長在精致的巖石花園里;有的高達六英尺(約合1.8米)，葉片帶有獨特的紋理，顏色從蓖麻酒色到墨綠色不一而足，花朵的顏色則包括藍色、紫色、紅色、甚至黃色。

　　許多鼠尾草屬于熱帶植物，必須當做一年生植物來種植;但也有部分鼠尾草足夠堅韌，可以撐過冬天。這些鼠尾草生長在中大西洋地區(qū)(mid-Atlantic states，美國行政區(qū)劃的十個大區(qū)之一，由七個州組成：紐約州，賓夕法尼亞州，新澤西州，馬里蘭州，西弗吉尼亞州，特拉華州和弗吉尼亞州——譯注)和三州地區(qū)(tristate，美國三州交界地區(qū)，尤指紐約州、新澤西州與康涅狄格州的交界處——譯注)，尤其是第七區(qū)(Zone 7)，那里的冬季溫度很少降到零度。

　　我有一株庭院鼠尾草(garden sage)，別名藥用鼠尾草(Salvia officinalis)。它并未因冬季的嚴寒、我的疏于照料以及忍冬藤蔓的纏繞而死去。它的木質(zhì)莖上生長出了灰綠色的葉片，紋理粗糙得喜人(這些葉片用在填料和豬肉菜肴中很可口)。它已經(jīng)長到了一蒲式耳(約合36升)的籃子那么大，抽出了三英尺長(約合0.9米)的莖，上面帶有肥大的橢圓形花苞。花苞呈現(xiàn)出斑斕帶紫的白顏色，再過幾天，就會開出碩大的紫色花朵。我曾把它和一株三色庭院鼠尾草種在一起，這株三色庭院鼠尾草有著卵石花紋的紫、綠雜色葉片，邊緣則為白色。兩株鼠尾草是一個令人愉悅的組合，但是三色鼠尾草沒能熬過嚴冬(雜色植物都有點嬌弱)。

　　另一株我很喜歡的植物，是墨西哥灌木鼠尾草(Mexican bush sage)，別名紫絨鼠尾草(Salvia leucantha)。有人說它是雙色花，因為白色花朵的基部有著天鵝絨般的淡紫色花萼。它的花期一直持續(xù)到霜凍來臨，但和本地區(qū)其它柔弱的鼠尾草一樣，它也沒能熬過去年冬季的冰雪。