On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 10:42:55 -0400, FACE wrote
I just did a Google Image on clerodendrum and it really looks very pretty --
but maybe those are specialty cultivars.

Oh, it IS pretty. Beautiful flowers. Actually Clerodendrum is a large
genus -- depending on which web page you hit, maybe 100 species, maybe
400. All native to SE Asia. Most info says that they won't survive
below 45F and need a greenhouse, but obviously there are exceptions. I
don't know what species I have, but the weather gets below freezing
every winter here (Tallahassee) and we had one night down around 22F
winter before last (in town -- 15F in rural areas) and it wasn't fazed
at all.

It would be a lovely garden plant if it weren't so damned invasive. I
think I mentioned that it propagates by runners. I've had to pull it
out of azalea beds because it was threatening to shade out the azaleas!
Yech. I don't need that. And to add insult, the disturbed foliage has a
rather obnoxious scent.

I should check tomorrow to see if any are in bloom so I can post a pic
for you.

I know that the car trick sounds drastic. I only use it for opportunistic
trees that have gotten to a coupla feet and man-powered pulling is out of
the question. Even then i will spade around the trunk to loosen things up a
bit before I pull. (That's the trunk of the tree -- not the car.)

I suppose you could try dynamite. Actually ISTR my father trying the
car trick with some tree once when I was growing up. I don't think it
worked for him.

I don't think I've found any of my clerodendrum that needs this
treatment. Even the strongest ones, I can pull by hand IF I can get a
good enough grip without hurting my hands. IOW it's stronger than my
fingers but not stronger than my legs. Probably is stronger than my
fingers were even when I was young. And if there's a handful that are
stronger than my legs, I don't mind digging a few. Just not a few
hundred.

For $115 it should do the pulling by itself while you sit on the porch. :-)

Yeah, well, that gets back to the "hire a teenager" idea. If it were
1/3 or maybe even 1/2 that price, I'd say I'll just try it.

Consider that you can buy a "specialty" shovel from Home Depot for about 5
bucks. [...] can also be employed for other things like digging holes in
the ground.

I like working in my yard, but digging up 200 woody weeds by digging
200 holes still doesn't sound like I'm having fun yet.

Edward