Summer beauties contd.

Bleeding Heart

Bleeding Heart! What an odd name for a plant. Why is it named so?

I wondered when I first saw this plant as a child as to how can such lovely flowers be given such a depressing name. Then I was told that it was due to the shape of the flowers that they were given this name. Well, at that time, however hard I tried, I could not imagine its flower to look like a bleeding heart. I didn’t even know how a human heart looked like, most probably to which it was being compared. Do they look like their name now? I don’t think so. But whatever they may look like, the thing that I knew was how wonderful would it be to have it growing in our house. At an age when the only flowers I knew of were Roses and Marigolds, something with a peculiar name like Bleeding Heart caught my attention and got etched in my memory.

Botanical name : Clerodendrum thomsoniae
Family : Verbenaceae


A perennial, medium sized vine and a native of West Africa, it is grown as an ornamental owing to its eye catching inflorescence.  Though it is a liana (woody climber) but it can be pruned to form a shrub.

Leaves are dark green and ovate in shape. Inflorescence is a terminal cyme. Flowers have an off-white calyx that look like tiny balloons initially. Corolla is crimson coloured and emerges out from the centre of calyx. At first it looks like a little pink bud hidden safely inside the calyx, but its colour deepens as it grows longer and emerges out from its shelter.  Stamens (five in number) and style are much longer than the corolla. The corolla is short lived and dries up soon but the calyx remains on the plant for a long time.

It blooms throughout summers.  In winters however it will shed leaves leaving the stems bare. The exposed stems look rather dry and one doubts whether there will be any fresh growth again but they look dry only from the outside. Inside they are green and fresh and will give out new leaves in spring or early summer.

Firecracker plant

The day I saw Bleeding Heart, I saw another plant for the first time and found it quite strange, actually strangely beautiful. It looked like a small, messy shrub with needle like leaves (which reminded me of Pine tree but they were actually stems) bearing bell shaped flowers.  The whole plant with slender branches and little hanging flowers looked very delicate. But no one knew its name.  Many years later it occurred to me that I should look for these two plants in a nursery. Getting Bleeding Heart was easy as I knew its name but how could I get this one? I neither knew its name nor could I describe it properly.  The second time I saw it, several years later, growing in a pot in the balcony of a house.  I guess it’s not a popular ornamental plant here. But it was a lucky day. As I was looking for flowering annuals in a nursery I saw 8-10 of these plants placed at one end of the nursery some distance away, half hidden by taller plants surrounding it. I immediately recognized it and ran straight towards them and said,“I want this. What’s its name?"

Botanical name : Russelia equisetiformis

Family : Plantaginaceae

The Firecracker or Coral plant when in bloom gives out long sprays of red tubular flowers at the ends of cascading branches that look like firecrackers, hence the name Firecracker plant. It starts blooming in spring. Maximum flowering takes place in summers. Thereafter, with the coming of rains, it slows down a little.

The stems are slender, angled with ridges and about 4-5 feet long. They grow straight at first and then cascade down thus making the plant a weeping shrub. Leaves are dark green, tiny, oval in shape and present in very few numbers. Flowers are small, red in colour, tubular and bi-lipped. And yes, Sunbirds love visiting them to feed on their nectar reserves.

Firecracker plant has a messy growing habit. But this is where its beauty lies. It can be grown in a pot or hanging basket but should be placed in an open space.