Essential Oil Composition and Traditional Uses of Salvia dentata , a Poorly Known Medicinal Plant from Namaqualand, South Africa.

South Africa has a rich history of medicinal plant species and their documented uses as traditional medicines, and is also home to three well-known, blue-flowered sage species of ethnobotanical importance. The Namaqualand bloublomsalie ( Salvia dentata ) has so far remained unstudied and apparently overlooked. Our study is the first to report on the essential oil chemistry of this medicinally relevant species and provide a comparison with the other two (well-studied) closely related Cape bloublomsalies ( Salvia africana and S. chamelaeagnea ). The data, generated from three geographically isolated populations comprised of 13 individual plants of S. dentata , revealed diagnostically high levels of camphor (14.37%), α-pinene (11.43%), camphene (10.18%), 1,8-cineole (eucalyptol) (9.42%) and bornyl acetate (8.56%) which provide a distinct chemical profile from the other two species.