Well, actually it is. I was just inspired by ‘This is not a Murder Mystery’. We did not see it earlier because all we seem to watch is murder mysteries and a programme that wasn’t a murder mystery did not seem high on our ‘watch’ list.

As it was, it was a murder mystery but the title alludes to the painter Magritte and ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’. It was a brilliant series, admittedly a bit more style than substance but what style. And the fact that it was Belgian was already a bonus before the orange man baby brought the whole of the thinking world together to cheer on Belgium in the world cup, even if, like me, you have no interest in football. Good old Donald Trump bringing people, with more than two brain cells, together.

But on to Clerodendrum chinense. I have added quite a few plants to the garden this spring and despite the lack of posts in recent months, for which I apologise, I have been busy in the garden and with work. Anyway, I got this plant in early spring and now have the first flowers open. It is not frost hardy and has rough, unpleasantly scented leaves, only a problem when you rub them, and will grow to about 1.5m. It is native to Southeast Asia and has been taken around the world as an ornamental but it can sucker freely and can be a nuisance when planted in gardens in warm climates. That is not going to be an issue here where I will have to keep it in the greenhouse in winter.

I know clerodendrum as spectacular climbers or shrubs with small flowers with prominently exerted stamens. Some also have showy calyces and those with white flowers tend to be fragrant. Clerodendrum trichotomum, a shrub with powerfully fragrant shite flowers (and pungent leaves) just about grows here but is not as good as it could be and it rarely produces the ‘unreal’ turquoise berries and red calyces that are so showy in warmer gardens in autumn.

Clerodendrum chinense is, so far, a stocky shrub and the three main shoots have produced clusters of flowers. The first, and smallest cluster, is now open and wow – what flowers! Oddly, although this seems to be the ‘usual’ representation of the species, the flowers are fully double. And they are quite large and held in a ‘bouquet’ of flowers. There are hints of a red calyx as the buds develop but these are hidden by the flowers as they open.

They are pretty and would be nice enough but, of course, they are fragrant. Descriptions of the fragrance vary and most say they are fruity. I have sniffed them at many times of the day and night and they seem to vary considerably. They are definitely most strongly fragrant at dusk and dawn (I admit I have not been out at midnight) and sometimes they smell like ‘Juicy Fruit’ gum – from what I can remember (I have too many fillings to chew gum these days) but more often the smell, to me, is just like jasmine tea. At present the plant is in the greenhouse but I am tempted to take it out while we are having a heatwave. It is proving difficult to keep the greenhouse below 40c even with wetting the floor every few hours.

I potted it in a loam-based compost and it is doing well. It is not supposed to be fussy about soil pH and it has an RHS AGM which seems odd for a plant that is rarely offered for sale. Like many plants I like, it can be a weed in some areas of the world but I will do my best to keep it happy. It should root from softwood cuttings so I will take some if it produces some strong shoots without flowers, and I will not complain if it suckers!

I was also delighted to get some ‘perennial’ heliotrope from the same source and one is labelled just ‘White’ (or ‘weisse’ since it came from Germany) and the other is an American cv called ‘Iowa’ bred (in Iowa) in the 1970s. When I started gardening I grew perennial heliotropes and, as a student at Kew we trained them as standards, not something you can do with seed-raised plants. But because I was not sure how the heliotropes would travel and I wanted heliotropes in the garden this year (more of that in future days) I grew some from seed. The standard seed is ‘Marine’ (or ‘Mini Marine’ but I don’t want that) and it was my first time growing heliotrope from seed. I have to say that they were easy – they germinated well, grew well in their cell trays and they quickly formed flower buds. The only issue was that they had large root systems which meant they tended to dry out quickly but that also hated to be waterlogged so I had to repot them into bigger pots before I was ready to plant them out and could not slosh water all over them!

In this pot I planted the three to make a comparison. As expected, both the perennials were more bushy with smaller flower clusters (so far). Top left is ‘Iowa’ and you can tell which is the white. ‘Marine is at the top right. Of course heliotrope is grown for fragrance as much as anything else, hence the inclusion in this post. Is there any difference? Well the white has a distinctly different aroma and is much more ‘vanilla’ than the others. I would say that ‘Iowa’ is more fragrant than ‘Marine’ but not hugely, though ‘Marine’ does show a lot of variation in flower size, colour and, I assume, scent. I grew about 75 plants and the rest have been given away or planted in a bed. What it has taught me is that I was wrong to be ‘sniffy’ about seed-raised heliotrope in the past. ‘Marine’ is easy from seed and the plants do all a heliotrope should do. They are no more difficult to grow than other bedding plants.

I will struggle to keep the perennials and I will be taking cuttings but I will not dismiss the seed-raised kinds again.

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