Family: Lamiaceae

Commonly called bleeding heart vine, Clerodendrum thomsoniae is a climbing vine that escapes cultivation. A landscape nightmare, C. thomsoniae puts out many runners that are impossible to kill or maintain. Runners can appear 20 feet from the original planting!  Furthermore, this strong vine destroys arbors, sidewalks, porches, and anything the C. thomsoniae can use as support.

High Risk Traits:

• Grows well in tropical climates
  
• Widely naturalized in the tropics and subtropics (but no evidence in the Hawaiian Islands to date)
  
• Regarded by some growers as an aggressive and weedy landscaping plant
  
• Other Clerodendrum species are invasive
  
• Tolerates many soil types
  
• Grows as both a shrub and a climber, with potential to overtop or smother other vegetation
  
• Reproduces by seeds and vegetatively by runners
  
• Seeds dispersed by birds and intentionally by people
  
• Able to regrow following sever pruning and repeated cutting

Low Risk Traits:

• Although regarded as an aggressive and weedy landscaping plant by some, other growers regard it as a desirable, and non-invasive landscaping plant
  
• Unarmed (no spines, thorns, or burrs)
  
• Non-toxic
  
• Herbicides effective at controlling other Clerodendrum species would likely be effective at controlling Clerodendrum thomsoniae if necessary