Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Clerodendrum tomentosum

Flowering stems. Photographer Don Wood, Old Princes Highway near Termeil

Fruiting branch with red calyces. Photographer Don Wood, remnant rainforest, Princes Highway north of Milton

Calyces at fruiting stage. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Durras Lake

Common name

Hairy Clerodendrum, Downy Chance Tree, Hairy Lollybush

Family

Lamiaceae

Where found

Forest, moist gullies and regrowth. Coast and ranges, mostly north of Broulee.

Notes

Tree or shrub to15 m high. Fruit and calyx lobes at the seeding stage fleshy. Bark brown or greyish brown, corky and scaly on larger trees. Stems square or angular in cross section, densely hairy, older stems usually remaining hairy. Leaves opposite each other or appearing whorled, 4–18 cm long, 20–45 mm wide, margins entire, or coarsely toothed in juvenile leaves, surfaces more or less velvety but the upper surface sometimes becoming hairless with age, tips pointed. Flowers white, tubular, the tube 20–33 mm long, with 5 lobes each 4–7 mm long, falling after the flowers are pollinated. Calyx lobes enlarging to about 12 mm long and red at the seeding stage. Flowers in many-flowered clusters. Fruit black, seated in the enlarged calyx. Flowering: October–February

Family was Verbenaceae.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Clerodendrum~tomentosum (accessed 7 January, 2021)