On 17/08/2020 17:44, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Mon, 17 Aug 2020 16:58:07 +0100, jeff Layman

One other thing which I find strange (and one for SRH, maybe). All the
books I have, published before about 1960 (including a scanned copy of
"The Illustrated Dictionary of Gardening", published 1884 - 1888), refer
to the genus as /Clerodendron/. After that, it is /Clerodendrum/. When
did it change? There is nothing at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerodendrum#History about the name
change. The RHS Dictionary of Gardening says the origin of the name is
from the Greek "kleros" and "dendron".

Not being an expert on these things, but having done Greek for a year
at school many decades ago, I'm sure that Clerodendron ought to be the
proper name for it. And indeed, many suppliers do call it that, our
local Burncoose among them. https://tinyurl.com/y26q2eka

I am sure that the correct name is Clerodendrum. See he
http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/search?q=Clerodendrum

Compare this to:
http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/search?q=clerodendron

If you look at https://www.gbif.org/search?q=clerodendrum, note that
for the second entry under "Species" it says that "Clerodendron" is
"doubtful".

It's very odd. Your knowledge of Greek agrees with the RHS Dictionary of
Gardening comment as to the origin of the name. Why did the last two
letters change from -on to -um?

--

Jeff