Salvia africana-lutea L.: a review of ethnobotany, phytochemistry, pharmacology applications and future prospects

Plants are nature’s reserve for vitality and health-boosting agents. Despite ever-rising interest and research on plant medicinal chemistry, many stones are still being left unturned. Moreover, many traditional medicinal plants are yet to be discovered or functionally characterized. This study presented an up-to-date review of a poorly explored member of the Salvia genus indigenous to Africa—Salvia africana-lutea L. (synonymous with Salvia aurea L.) with details on its geographical distribution, ethnobotany, and pharmacological applications. We reviewed all literature published on Salvia africana-lutea up to January 2023, retrieved from PubMed, Scopus, and ScienceDirect as primary databases and google scholar as the secondary source. From our literature search, we found 38 documents published on S. africana-lutea, despite the popularity of the Salvia genus as a medicinal plant (having over 15,000 articles published to date). From the retrieved literature, only a few studies focused on exploiting the ethnobotanical features of the plants, such as the morphology, flowering and existence, and nature of its trichomes. Some studies have reported S. africana-lutea as an excellent source of essential oils trapped within their leaf trichomes with numerous phytochemicals and bioactivities. Other studies have reported some interesting pharmacological activities of plant extracts and isolated phytochemicals, such as their antimicrobial, anti-oxidative, analgesic, antipyretic, anticancer, cytotoxic, and other bioactivities. We identified some limitations of the few published studies, highlighting future research needs that should draw more scientific interest to foster more study on this under-explored and valuable plant species of Salvia, to harness its medicinal and industrial potential fully.