Texas sage
Leucophyllum frutescens
also called cenizo, barometer bush, texas ranger, purple sage
The silver barometer bush of Texas and the Southwest: felted gray leaves all year, and sudden all-over flushes of orchid-purple bloom that follow the humidity a few days ahead of summer rain.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Silver and gray
- Flower color
- Purple and violet · Pink
- Sunlight
- Full sun, the harder the better
- Watering
- Almost none once established; this is the shrub the sprinkler kills
- Soil
- Poor, alkaline, sharply drained; caliche is fine, compost is not
- Feeding
- Gentle all-organic
- USDA zones
- 8a–11a
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Plant out
- at the last spring frost
- Plant spacing
- 4 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 3 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 6 ft 7 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, with a taproot it keeps
- Working depth
- 24 in–5 ft
- Can reach
- 10 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 10–16 ft across, about 1.5–2.5× the width of the plant
It anchors downwards as well as sideways, which is what lets it stand in a gale and what makes it hate being moved. Plant it small: past a few years in the ground a taprooted tree transplants badly, and often not at all.
The habit is Texas sage’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- When
- Not harvested. If it must be shaped at all, thin it in late winter and then leave it alone.
- What to look for
- A genuinely overgrown plant, which takes years. Bare inner wood means it has been sheared into a ball and needs rebuilding.
- How to harvest
- Thin whole stems at the base to keep the airy silver cloud; never box it. A sheared one goes leafless inside and blooms only at the skin. Water it almost never; the bloom rides the rain, not the hose.
- How often
- Every few years at most.
- Storing the crop
- Nothing to store. When it turns purple ahead of a storm, believe it over the forecast; the neighbors' plants will confirm.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
The rain-bloom is real: rising humidity and a pressure drop trigger the flush, so the neighborhood turns purple together before a storm. It is not a sage at all, and the fastest way to kill one is the ordinary kindness of irrigation and mulch.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com