[John J]

I rather like the flowers of this salvia that I would describe as a sort of burnt-orange in colour. However, one of our more down-to-earth lady members here in Cyprus calls it a 'mucky brown'! What do others think?

[Alice]

Mucky-brown? Yes.
Interesting? Yes.

[Alisdair]

Amazing flower! At RBG Melbourne, where it was growing more as a shrub, we saw it only in bud (or fruit), but even when not in flower it's a handsome plant:

[Jill S]

Brown, but too much colour to be 'mucky' surely? But then I like the old velvety donkey-brown wallflowers as well.

[Fermi]

Amazing flower! At RBG Melbourne, where it was growing more as a shrub, we saw it only in bud (or fruit), but even when not in flower it's a handsome plant:

Those look like the calcyces after the flowers have fallen - you could have gathered some seed
It grows well for us in central Victoria - in fact it has self seeded a bit and I need to restrict where it grows - currently there is an over-sized one in a rock garden but it protects one of the echeverias from the frost so I'm reluctant to remove it!
I think it's also had a name change and is simply Salvia aurea now.
cheers
fermi

[John J]

I've seen both names listed as syn of the other but the majority seem to consider S africana-lutea as the accepted one. Maybe Alisdair can clarify it for us?

[JTh]

According to the Plant List,  Salvia africana-lutea is the accepted name, S. aurea is a synonym

[Alisdair]

Thanks, Jorun; on this forum we do usually take the Kew/Missouri Botanic Garden's The Plant List as our authority. That is very much a "work in progress", and sometimes when we have strong often more recent taxonomic evidence to back up a different name - see the Cyclamen thread for various examples - we don't follow it so exactly.
The Salvia aurea name had been accepted by the 1988 Flora of New Zealand by Webb, Sykes and Garnock-Jones, but Rafael Govaerts working on the 2003 World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (an earlier Kew database) opted instead for Salvia africana-lutea, and in due course, as Jorun says, that has been followed by The Plant List.

[JTh]

Alisdair, are there any other genera besides the cyclamen where the Plant List is not the most updated one?

[Alisdair]

Jorun, the short answer is Yes!
But I can't really help with a long answer. The Plant List is a true work in progress, as it is continuously subject to change depending on current taxonomic research. It's best thought of as a short cut to avoiding endless research on names.
A useful point is that The Plant List gives defined confidence levels, so that you can see which names are pretty well rock-solid (eg Quercus suber), and which are less widely accepted, or even Unresolved (eg Haworthia affinis).
(Clicking on the words in colour above should bring up The Plant List's own definitions.)

[John J]

Whatever name is eventually decided upon I still like to see our plant come into flower, be it burnt orange or 'mucky brown'.

[Fleur Pavlidis]

Light bulbs going on. i got two of these from Sparoza and when I saw the muddy brown flowers I assumed I've missed seeing them in their true colours and this was the gone-over look.