Salvia lanceolata is a perennial shrub native to a small area of coast on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. It is typically found growing in sandy ground at sea level, and on dry hills and flat ground up to 1000 feet elevation. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a pioneer in evolutionary theory, first described and named the plant "lanceolata" in 1791. Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg, who was delayed in South Africa on the way to Japan, first collected it nearly twenty years earlier, along with approximately 3,000 plants that he later described. It wasn't until 1800 that Thunberg gave the plant the specific epithet "nivea", meaning 'snowy' in Latin, referring to the color of the foliage. Because of the rules of nomenclature, Lamarck's name had precedence because he was the first to name it.