The clerodendrum are not only reliable perennials but beautiful and different. They require no pampering, asking only ordinary garden soil, with a bit of food and water. They will take droughts but will not bloom as well as when watered regularly.
They thrive in sun or half shade. Most of them will take the cold down to 17 degrees returning in the spring to make the garden gay. In colder climates, they may be grown as large pot plants or in five-gallon cans. They may be put into a cellar for winter and repotted in the spring.
They are nice in the front of the shrubbery border where they show bright color when the shrubs are not blooming, or as background for flower beds.
Common Types of Clerodendrum
Clerodendrum Siphonanthus
Clerodendrum siphonanthus indica is called tube flower, Turks-turban and in Louisiana by the more poetic name bowing lady, for when it blooms the heads are so heavy that they bow gracefully in every vagrant breeze. It grows to a stout woody shrub eight to ten feet high.
The eight-inch oblong leaves are in whorls at the joints, from three to six leaves making a collar at each. In late summer the terminal heads of flowers open creamy white with tubes four inches long. Luscious pink stamens protrude airily from the tubes. The petals open in the morning but close about noon.
On each head, dozens of flowers keep opening day after day. They are fascinating to watch. The seeds are fleshy and blue. After the flowers and seeds have fallen the calyx is reddish-tan, five-petalled, the whole looking like a bunch of wooden blooms.
They are much used in dried arrangements. Bowing lady makes a wonderful specimen plant where its grace may be enjoyed. An old clump may send up a dozen or more bloom stalks.
Clerodendrum Fragrans
Clerodendrum fragrans, called Cashmere Bouquet because of its intense perfume, grows to five or six feet, and has large bright green heart-shaped leaves to 12” inches long. The flowers are in terminal clusters, waxen white, with a whisper of pale pink, each bloom a small inch across, double rose, 12 to 20 in a tight cluster.
A stem of these in a milk glass goblet surrounded by geranium leaves, what Grandmere called a tussie-mussie bouquet, makes a conversation piece and perfumes a room. Or a stem is a ready-made corsage.
It is well to give these roots a little winter protection in the form of mulch. Fragrans roots readily from cuttings. It blooms all season for it puts on side branches that bloom later.
Clerodendrum Bungei
Clerodendrum bungei is called red Mexican hydrangea. It also blooms all season with foot-across heads of rosy red five-petalled blooms. The unopened buds have a purple cast. The blooms are fragrant but the heart-shaped leaves have an unpleasant odor when bruised.
Bungei is a sturdy plant that grows to ten feet high. It will bloom in the hottest sun or shade. I grow it on the north side of my gray-shingled house where it gets only about four hours of sun a day. It is stunning with a gray background. It increases by stolons and walks around, but the young plants may be given to friends.
Clerodendrum fallax
Clerodendrum fallax comes from far-away Java to dazzle the viewer with panicles 1J6 feet long of brightest scarlet blooms with long stamens. It grows to four feet high and blooms in midsummer. Fallax has heart-shaped leaves up to a foot long. In Louisiana, it is commonly called the Russian red cap.
Popular Clerodendrum Thomsoniae
Clerodendrum thomsoniae is a twining woody vine with dark green ovate leaves five inches long. It is almost continuous in its blooming of cherry-red flowers extending from a white calyx, charming with little question marks of stamens extending from the blooms.
Thomsoniae is popularly known as the bleeding-heart vine. This clerodendrum should be container-grown for it is tender and evergreen. It may be brought into a sunny gallery or window in winter. In summer it is happy as a patio plant with a post to twine around.
Cuttings are easily rooted either in a propagating box or in a pot of sandy soil. In the South where many perennials are hard to keep owing to hot summers, clerodendrum find it just to their liking and grow rampantly. Farther north one could hardly find a showier pot or tub plants for sun porch or home greenhouse.
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