Leaf of the Day: Fountain Clerodendron and Dwarf Poinciana

It’s Thursday morning and I am having a break from the flower heads. I cycled into Winter Park village to look for any other flowers that might inspire me and got caught in the rain on the way back but I did get my glasses mended.
When I eventually started work it was the beautiful Clerodendron minahassae, the Fountain clerodendron. I had to spend quite some time trying to identify this tree as the label had gone missing at Leu. It is really pretty. These long tubular white blossoms spray out from the branches and the leaves are elegant and a lovely shape.

It seems there will be some interesting berries to come too, judging by what I have read. It was delightful to paint but white on white is hard in watercolour. I think they need to be set against the green leaves to show off their true beauty but the central curling red stamens are gorgeous.
The clerodenrons are a huge family with many pretty flowers and now I have seen a couple more shrubs at Leu.

Number 2 today was the Dwarf Ponciana floret which I had sketched last week. Again I had to get another flower head but luckily they are all quite similar, so I could work from the sketch too. The colours look dull here but are brighter in the original. (I am not sure that the computer does very well with yellow.) I am noticing more and more flowers with red stamens here. I wonder why.

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Fountain Clerodendron and Dwarf Poinciana



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