Clerodendrum L.
Erect or climbing, unarmed shrubs, hairy or glabrous, often foetid, sometimes with underground suckers or rhizomes. Lvs usually opposite, rarely whorled, simple. Fls in axillary cymes or terminal corymbs or panicles, pedicellate, fairly large. Calyx campanulate, usually turbinate, sometimes tubular, 5-toothed to deeply 5-lobed, often strongly accrescent. Corolla usually strongly zygomorphic, salverform with tube narrow for most of length; limb 5-lobed. Stamens 4, didynamous, inrolled in bud, long-exserted and usually curved at anthesis. Style exserted, 2-fid. Ovary incompletely 4-celled, each cell with 1 ovule. Fr. a drupe, often enclosed in calyx, often 4-lobed; exocarp succulent or nearly dry; pyrenes 1-4.
c. 400 spp., mostly Old World tropics and subtropics, a few in temperate E. Asia. Naturalised sp. 1.
The only temperate sp. cultivated in N.Z. other than that described below is C. bungei Steudel. This has purple-tomentose young shoots and lvs, and dense corymbs of pink fls. Apparently frs are not formed here and there may be only 1 clone in N.Z. It has a strongly rhizomatous system but has not been reported wild.
In warmer parts of the country easily the commonest sp. in cultivation is the tropical E. African C. ugandense Prain. This is an upright sparsely hairy shrub with blue fls and black frs. There are no reports of wild plants.
