Sage, Wood

Information on Wood Sage

Common Name: Wood Sage
Scientific Name: Teucrium scorodonia
Irish Name: Iúr sléibhe
Family Group: Lamiaceae
Distribution: View Map (Courtesy of the BSBI)
Flowering Period


Click for list of all flowering by month
Wood Sage is not easily confused with other wild plants on this web site.


Small to medium perennial with paired straw-coloured, yellow-green flowers on one-sided leafless branched spikes.  From July to September, it has small, one-lipped flowers with maroon coloured, protruding anthers in a hairy corolla and heart-shaped, wrinkled, downy leaves.  The stem is reddish and square. It grows usually on acid soil and is found in dry places, woodland, hills and mountainsides but is hard to find in the centre of the country.  This is a native plant and belongs to the family Lamiaceae.

I first identified this flower on Killiney Hill, Co Dublin in 1973 and photographed it in the Burren in 1995 and 2007. 

If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please submit your sighting to the National Biodiversity Data Centre

Sage, Wood
Sage, Wood
Sage, Wood
Sage, Wood