Clerodendrum melanocrater Gürke

Climber or ± scandent shrub 1.8–4.5 m. tall or tall shrub with long thin scrambling branches to 7 m.; stems brown to black, square with keeled pale angles and ridged when dry, ± bifariously adpressed pubescent when young but soon glabrous, sometimes with persistent recurved petiole-bases.. Leaves turning quite black on drying, ovate to elliptic or oblong-elliptic, 1.5–16 cm. long, 0.7–9.5 cm. wide, acuminate and mucronate at the apex or tip ± rounded but mucronate, rounded to cuneate at the base, thin, ± pubescent above, glabrous beneath; petiole 0.6–6 cm. long.. Inflorescences long terminal thyrses 9–25 cm. long, 8–15 cm. wide, made up of up to 20 lateral many-flowered dichasial cymes, on stalks to 4 cm. long, the lowest from leaf-axils but leaves reduced above to bracts but still with lamina up to 6 × 2 mm. and petiole 4 mm. long; pedicels 0.5–2.3 cm. long; all axes adpressed grey-pubescent or pale ferruginous.. Calyx-tube white or mauve-white; tube cupular, 2–4 mm. long; limb divided into ovate acute lobes 1.5–2 × 2 mm. and with a basal tubular part of up to 1 mm. long.. Corolla cream turning yellowish, ink-blue when bruised, drying black and turning black on the plant, finely gland-dotted outside; tube 7 mm. long; lobes ovate, 3 mm. long, 2 mm. wide.. Anthers exserted 8 mm.; filaments green; anthers deep blue.. Style exserted 8 mm, green.. Fruit black, ellipsoid to subglobose, 5–10 mm. long, 5–8 mm. wide, 1–2(–3)-lobed.. Fig. 16/1–3.