Hill glorybower

Clerodendrum infortunatum is a flowering shrub or small tree, and is so named because of its rather ugly leaf . The stem is erect, 0.5–4 m (1.6–13.1 ft) high, with no branches, and produces circular leaves with 15 cm (5.9 in) diameter. Leaves are simple, opposite; both surfaces sparsely villous-pubescent, elliptic, broadly elliptic, ovate or elongate ovate, 3.5–20 cm (1.4–7.9 in) wide, 6–25 cm (2.4–9.8 in) long, dentate, inflorescence in the terminal, peduncled, few-flowered cyme; flowers white with purplish pink or dull-purple throat, pubescent. Fruit berry, globose, turned bluish-black or black when ripe, enclosed in the red accrescent fruiting-calyx. The stem is hollow, and the leaves are 15–20 cm (5.9–7.9 in) long and borne in whorls of four on very short petioles. The inflorescence is huge, consisting of many tubular snow white flowers in a terminal cluster up to 0.6 m (2 ft) long. The tubes of the flowers are about 10 cm (3.9 in) long and droop downward, and the expanded corollas are about 5 cm (2.0 in) across.

The fruits are attractive dark metallic blue drupes, about 1 cm (0.4 in) in diameter. The fruit usually has four dry nutlets, and the seeds may have or may not have endosperm. It flowers from April to August.

Clerodendrum infortunatum is used in Ayurvedic and Siddha traditional medicines. Fresh leaves are given for diarrhea, liver disorders, and headache. The leaf and root are used as antidandruff, antipyretic, ascaricide, laxative, vermifuge, anticonvulsant, antidiabetic, and for gravel, malaria, scabies, skin diseases, sores, spasm, scorpion sting, snake bite, and tumors. In many traditional practices the leaves and root are widely used as antihyperglycemic.