# Greek sage (Salvia fruticosa)

*Three-lobed sage; perhaps the ancient *elelisphakon*; *Salvia triloba* L.f.; *Salvia fruticosa* Mill.; in pharmacy *Salviae trilobae folium**

**Known today as.** *Salvia fruticosa*, an evergreen shrub of the family Lamiaceae up to a metre high, native to the eastern Mediterranean from Sicily and southern Italy and Cyrenaica through Greece to western Syria, and naturalised in Spain and Portugal, where the European Medicines Agency’s assessment report thinks it was probably brought by ancient navigators. It is told from garden sage by its leaves, sometimes with one or two small lobes at the base, densely felted, grey above and white beneath. The leaf’s essential oil is chiefly 1,8-cineole, with camphor and a little thujone.

Kind: Plant

> **Caution.** Conventional clinical safety data are absent, the assessment report notes, and it cannot be recommended by mouth under eighteen. The oil contains camphor and a little thujone.

## What was it used for?

A tea for digestion and the blood. The assessment report gathers its folk uses: in Madeira for headache and as a blood purifier, in Spain as a stomachic, a tranquilliser, and a wound herb, elsewhere in the Mediterranean as a carminative, and in the Paphos district of Cyprus as a tea after heavy meals and a daily breakfast drink of diabetics.

## What does modern science say?

The European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee declined to adopt a monograph on the leaf (public statement of 2016). It recognised the plant’s medicinal use in several member states but found the documented historical information “insufficient to verify the necessary conditions of a long-standing traditional use”: some preparations had been in medicinal use for more than fifteen years but less than thirty. Its assessment report finds rosmarinic acid, carnosic acid and carnosol, flavonoids, and triterpenes in the leaf besides the oil.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **1,8-cineole**: chief constituent of the leaf’s essential oil
- **camphor**: in the oil
- **thujone**: a little, in the oil
- **rosmarinic acid**: 
- **carnosic acid**: with carnosol

**Mechanism.** Not established in the sources read for this entry.

**Standing.** There is no European monograph: the European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee declined to adopt one (public statement of 2016).

## What did the older authorities say?

**The European Medicines Agency’s assessment report (2016).** Archaeological evidence suggests that the plant, hidden among the ancient authors under the general name *elelisphakon*, has probably been used medicinally since 1400 BC; mistranslating that word as the garden sage, *S. officinalis*, may have cost Greek sage its medicinal reputation and given garden sage uses that probably belonged to it.

## Sources

- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Public statement on Salviae trilobae folium (Three-lobed sage leaf)*. EMA/HMPC/599993/2014, 31 May 2016.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Assessment report on Salviae trilobae folium*. EMA/HMPC/599992/2014, 31 May 2016.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Public statement on Salviae trilobae folium (Three-lobed sage leaf)*. EMA/HMPC/599993/2014, 31 May 2016.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Assessment report on Salviae trilobae folium*. EMA/HMPC/599992/2014, 31 May 2016.

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*Greek sage.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-17. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/greek-sage

Historical description, not medical advice.