Clerodendrum inerme

• Botanical Name : Clerodendrum inerme (L.) Gaertn

• The name Clerodendrum is from the Greek kleros, chance, and dendron, a tree, and alludes to a native legend that the plants possessed medicinal properties, which were a possible cure for certain ailments.

  Volkameria inermis L. is the new name of the plant but since Clerodendrum inerme is more familiar name, the new name is given as the synonym.

• Synonyms : Volkameria inermis L.
• Common Name : Vanjai, Vilayati Mehendi, Glory Bower
• Plant Family : Verbenaceae
• Plant Form : Shrub
• Occurrence (Sectors) : 1, 2, 4, 7, 10-12, 17, 22-30
• Occurrence (Special Areas) : Indroda Park, Ayurvedic Udyan, Van Chetana Kendra

About Clerodendrum inerme Plant :

• Habit : A straggling branched shrub.
• Bark : Greenish-brown, lenticillate; branches greenish-brown or purplish softly pubescent, slightly flattened for younger parts, terete in older.
• Leaves : Leaves opposite, entire, elliptic or obovate, obtuse, base acute.
• Inflorescence : Cymes
• Flower :
  • Flowers in 3-flowered cymes, bracts small. Calyx copular, teeth 5, enlarged in fruit. Corolla tubular, white, tube long, hairy inside, 5-lobed, limb bilabiate, lobes unequal, oblong.
  • Stamens 4, filament exserted, red, didynamous, anthers oblong.
  • Ovary imperfectly 4-celled, cells 1-ovuled, style long, stigma bifid.
• Fruit : Drupe 4-lobed, pyrene, surrounded by striate, encircled by the persistent calyx at the base.
• Flowering and Fruiting Time : August - January
• Significance :
  • Commonly planted in the gardens for making hedges.
  • The juice of the leaves has much reputation to bring down the fever.
  • It is also well adapted to the topiarist's art for cutting and making various designs of animals etc. in the gardens.