Harlequin glorybower
Clerodendrum trichotomum · Lamiaceae · 누리장나무
How to spot it
The foul smell of leaves and stems, and blue fruit showing above a red calyx.
Look
- Leaves
- Broadly egg-shaped with a pointed tip, 8-20 x 5-13 cm, with smooth or coarsely toothed margins, and hairs and faint glands on the veins beneath. The leaf stalk is 3-10 cm and hairy.
- Flowers
- From mid-July to mid-August, white flowers 3 cm across bloom in cymes (24 cm wide) at the tips of new shoots. The corolla has five lobes, and the reddish calyx is deeply cut into five.
- Fruit
- The drupe is round, 6-8 mm across, ripening blue; it is wrapped in the red calyx and later shows outside it. It matures from late September to mid-October.
- Bark
- Gray-white, with white inside; the whole stem has a foul smell.
Where it grows
- In Korea
- Native
- Native to
- Taiwan, China, the Philippines and Japan; in Korea it grows throughout the area south of Gangwon and Hwanghae.
- Ecology
- Grows on sunny rocky ground or among rocks on mountain foothills, in valleys and by the sea. Likes well-drained sandy soil and is strong in cold and against pollution.