Description:

• Trees, shrubs, or perennial herbs, rarely spinescent
• Leaves entire or toothed
• Flowers ± regular, usually in lax, pedunculate cymes in axils of upper leaves or terminal, sometimes in crowded, terminal heads or corymbs
• Calyx 5-lobed; tube somewhat narrow or campanulate, sparsely glandular, sometimes hairy
• Corolla white, blue, purple-red, 5-lobed; tube narrowly cylindrical, straight or curved, often widened towards throat, sometimes very long or only as long as calyx; limb spreading or reflexed, anterior lobes larger than posterior pairs
• Stamens 4, didynamous, arising on upper part of corolla tube; filaments linear, often long-exserted; anther thecae scarcely diverging
• Ovary imperfectly 4-locular; style linear, usually exserted; stigma 2-fid
• Drupe obovoid or globose, often 4-grooved and 4-lobed; mesocarp ± fleshy; endocarp bony or crustaceous, separating into 4 pyrenes or 2 pairs of pyrenes
• x = 13 (1 report) (B-chromosomes, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Clerodendrum L.
  • Linnaeus: 109 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 285 (1754)
  • Baker: 292 (1900) as Clerodendron
  • Pearson: 218 (1912) as Clerodendron
  • Phillips: 639 (1951)
  • Verdcourt: 84 (1992)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 400, in tropical and subtropical regions of the Old World
• Southern Africa: Species 20, widespread but absent from Northern and Western Cape