Clerodendrum japonicum(Thunb.) Sweet

Japanese glorybower

WFO wfo-0000882935 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Clerodendrum japonicum, photographed by 雲一百香果
fig. a 雲一百香果, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203144511

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000785524
Filed as
Clerodendrum japonicum (Thunb.) Sweet
Det. by
Beaman, J.H.
Collected
Beaman, J.H.; Beaman, R.S.; Beaman, T.E. 1984-02-13
Origin
MY
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 17 botanical countries

Regions where Clerodendrum japonicum is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Taiwan, Tibet, Andaman Is., Assam, Bangladesh, Borneo, East Himalaya, Jawa, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam China South-CentralChina SoutheastTaiwanTibetAssamBangladeshBorneoEast HimalayaJawaLaosMyanmarNepalPhilippinesSumateraThailandVietnam Andaman Is.
Native distribution of Clerodendrum japonicum, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Andaman Is. AND ASIA-TROPICAL
Assam ASS
Bangladesh BAN
Borneo BOR
East Himalaya EHM
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Philippines PHI
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Taiwan TAI
Tibet CHT

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 131 in flower of 170 examined

Proportion of examined Clerodendrum japonicum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 3 4 too few examined
Feb 3 9 33% 12% to 65%
Mar 11 14 79% 52% to 92%
Apr 43 44 98% 88% to 100%
May 15 16 94% 72% to 99%
Jun 9 16 56% 33% to 77%
Jul 11 12 92% 65% to 99%
Aug 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Sep 10 16 63% 39% to 82%
Oct 10 15 67% 42% to 85%
Nov 7 12 58% 32% to 81%
Dec 4 7 57% 25% to 84%

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Clerodendrum japonicum observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 131 of 170 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. One month has fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for it. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,010 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 10.3 °C 12.4 °C 15.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.4 °C 29.6 °C 30.5 °C
Annual rainfall 1,899 mm 2,586 mm 3,791 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 60 mm 108 mm 408 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,010 research-grade observations of Clerodendrum japonicum that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 23 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Clerodendrum bethuneanum H.Low
  • Clerodendrum coccineum H.J.Lam
  • Clerodendrum coccineum (Loisel.) D.Dietr.
  • Clerodendrum darrisii H.Lév.
  • Clerodendrum dentatum (Roxb.) Steud.
  • Clerodendrum esquirolii H.Lév.
  • Clerodendrum imperialis Carrière
  • Clerodendrum japonicum f. album (C.Pei) Moldenke
  • Clerodendrum japonicum var. album C.Pei
  • Clerodendrum kaempferi (Jacq.) Siebold ex Hassk.
  • Clerodendrum kaempferi (Jacq.) Siebold
  • Clerodendrum kaempferi f. album (C.Pei) Moldenke
  • Clerodendrum kaempferi f. salmoneum Moldenke
  • Clerodendrum kaempferi var. album (C.Pei) Moldenke
  • Clerodendrum leveillei Fedde ex H.Lév.
  • Clerodendrum scopiferum Miq.
  • Clerodendrum singalense Miq.
  • Clerodendrum squamatum Vahl
  • Clerodendrum squamatum var. bethuneanum (H.Low) Bakh.
  • Volkameria coccinea Loisel.
  • Volkameria dentata Roxb.
  • Volkameria japonica Thunb.
  • Volkameria kaempferi Jacq.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.