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Lolly Bush Clerodendrum Floribundum Seeds
Packet of 10+seeds of this really beautiful native species!
Commonly know as Lolly bush or smooth Clerondendrum, this really ornamental species has a huge potential for feature plantings in parks and gardens.
Being a smallish shrubby tree, it is easy to manage, and also really hardy living in a large range of soils from rainforest mulch to dry rocky gravels.
It even lives through seasonal flooding here, and it has a natural range from New Guinea, all the way through the top of the Northern Territory and Western Australia, down through Queensland, even into the bottom half of New South Wales.
It gets its two part name from the Greeks with Clero meaning lottery and Dendros meaning tree. The lottery part is because they were not sure if fellas in this Genus had medicinal value or not. The Flora in Floribundum means flowers and Bundum means plenty, or an abundance of flowers.
So yeah, it’s really the “might or might not be medicinal, lots of flowers tree”.
The fruit really do look like green, red, and black lollies from a distance, but they are not edible and up close the bitter hard calyx isn’t really appealing.
Looking at only as far as I can tell. I have had a few folks say “You can eat them” but I have never seen anyone actually do it, and I can’t find any references anywhere of the fruit being edible in any way. I reckon like a lot of things, it is just confusion due to the common name and appearance. Prime example of why you should always do a hell of a lot of research before sampling any alleged bush tucker species.
Apparently the branches and bark were crushed and rubbed on for aches and pains and the roots were boiled and eaten, though after preparing testing and finally having a nibble myself I don’t recommend them as a food at all. Must be more to it than just cutting and boiling because when I did it the taste was awful.
I do not recommend and maybe there is toxic bits that I am not aware of too? Don’t try it at home folks, I will never be bothering with it as a potential food again.
It is a beautiful, and quite unusual tree and that’s a great reason to grow it.
I urge you to Search Online Images as my pictures are really crappy…
Better than the majority of council plantings I see around and being a hardy native too, it should be promoted much more I reckon.
I am lucky enough to know of a few patches in the bush that they grow locally, so that is where the majority of the seeds will come from. I have also planted a heap in pots to go out around the property as I really reckon they look cool. Germination takes 1-4weeks for me and is nearly 100%.
Better than a rose, no disease issues, just as easy to prune into a hedge, never needs watering once established, and no nasty thorns.
What more could you want? I really fail to see why they are not more common as suburban ornamental plants?
Wildharvested sustainably, no chemicals, no nasties, no problems!!!
