Calle de la Salvia

Sage gives its name to this short street in Valdeacederas, a stretch running perpendicular to the grid that drops toward Bravo Murillo. The name adds it to a small constellation of nearby streets devoted to flowers and plants: Azucenas, Magnolia and Cantueso cross here too. The botanical taste of the street map was no whim of gardeners. In the mid-twentieth century, when Madrid absorbed Chamartín de la Rosa and other outlying towns, dozens of repeated names appeared, and the city untangled the mess by renaming whole streets after flowers and herbs. The plant chosen here carries an old healing reputation. The name salvia comes from Latin, of the family of salvus (safe and sound) and salvare, to keep in health. Greeks and Romans held it to be an almost sacred herb. What has not been documented is why this stretch, and not a neighboring one, came to bear sage among so many sister flowers.