page_title: Salvia tingitana
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Salvia tingitana / History
caption_attribution_description: An illustration by Alpino titled "Marum aegyptium", unknown to Etlinger (1777) in the original description of Salvia tingitana, based in part on "Horminum tingitanum" (1690) by Rivinus.
context_page_description: Salvia tingitana is an herbaceous perennial in the family Lamiaceae. It has a long and enigmatic history—it has been grown and described since the 17th century without any certainty about its origin. Botanists' speculation that it was native to northern Africa is reflected in the specific epithet tingitana, which refers to the town of "Tingi", even though no native plants have ever been found there. It was not until 1989 that a wild population of the plant was discovered, in western Saudi Arabia.
context_section_description: S. tingitana was described and named in 1777 by Andreas Ernst Etlinger, though it was known for at least eighty years before that, and possibly as soon as the early 17th century. A study in 2008 by Foley, Hedge, and Möller compared old herbarium specimens and drawings in order to understand the plant's confusing history. The earliest record of S. tingitana that they could verify was a specimen from the late 1690s in the Paris herbarium from the collection of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, who described it as "Sclarea tingitana foetidissima hirsuta, flore albo". He gave no information about its provenance other than "habitat in Africa". He travelled to Madrid, Seville, and Cadiz in 1688, so it is possible he collected it from one of those places. From the name he gave to the plant, it is likely he believed it was from north Africa.
  Earlier mentions of the plant are scattered and unreliable. Prospero Alpini described a plant (Marum aegyptium) in his De Plantis Exoticis Libri Duo (1627) that might be S. tingitana, based on his description and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's listing (in 1805) of Marum aegyptium as a synonym for S. foetida, itself a synonym for S. tingitana. In 1690, Rivinus published a drawing of a plant named Horminum tingitanum (pictured), which was the first time the name tingitana was associated with Salvia. Since Rivinus' herbarium no longer exists it isn't possible to confirm that his specimen was  S. tingitana.
  In 1759 Arduino, prefect of the Padua Botanical Garden, described a 'new' plant with the polynomial name "Salvia caule fruticoso, foliis ovato-sinuatis, crenatis, rugosis, hirsutis". Based on his description and an illustration, this is probably the first full description of S. tingitana.  When Etlinger described and named S. tingitana in 1777 in his Commentatio Botanico-Medica de Salvia, he referred to both Tournefort's and Rivinus' earlier descriptions.  Around the turn of the 18th century, S. tingitana was written about more frequently—Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1797) described seeing the plant at the Berlin Botanical Garden, and Lamarck described it in 1805. Other notable botanists who wrote about it at the time included Martin Vahl (1804–1805) and Christiaan Hendrik Persoon (1805).
caption: "Marum Aegyptium" (1640) by Alpini
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