By Piers66
Surrey,
United Kingdom 
Are these salvias both hot lips?
At my local garden centre they had a number of salvia hot lips for sale in the reduced section. Most had the white and pink flowers that I expected, but some were solid red.
The staff member explained to me that hot lips flowers change colour depending on the temperature, and the red ones weren't mislabelled. The thing that makes me question this is that the base of the white and pink ones (sepals?) are green, whereas the red ones are almost black.
I quite like the red ones, and at £10 for quite a large pot they're a bit of a bargain, but I already have a hot lips salvia so don't want to get one and find it's actually the same.
Any thoughts?
26 Oct, 2021
Answers
OK, and do the red flowers on yours have dark sepals like those in the photo?
26 Oct, 2021
I have never looked that closely. Will do tomorrow.
26 Oct, 2021
the neighbour has hotlips and she sometimes gets all red flowers but the sepals are green like the ones with the red and white flowers.
lets hope Owd can solve this.
I wonder if the dark ones are another variety and they have just been put together in the nursery. Royal Bumble has almost black sepals.
27 Oct, 2021
Only got red and white flowers at the moment, Amethyst Lips has green sepals though, so it possibly is another different plant. S. gesnerifolia has blackish sepals as does one called Crimson and black.
27 Oct, 2021
Thanks for the info. I'll be very interested to see what happens as the weather gets colder!
29 Oct, 2021
True. Ours has both red and red and white flowers on it at the moment.
26 Oct, 2021