Plant in part to full (coastal) sun and irrigate regularly. Hardy to about 20-25 degrees F. Can be pruned back continually to keep the plant more compact or even trained up as a small patio tree. This species will take cooler conditions than most of the more tropical Clerodendrum

This plant, long cultivated as Clerodendrum ugandense, comes from East Africa from Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Caprivi Strip, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Northern Provinces, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zaïre and Zimbabwe. The name for the genus Clerodendrum comes from the Greek words 'kleros', which means "chance", "fate" or "clergy" and 'dendron' meaning "a tree" in reference to the variation in reports of the medicinal usefulness of some species of Clerodendrum the use of tree in the genus for religious purposes in Asia. It was originally described as Clerodendrum ugandense by the Scottish botanist Sir David Prain in 1909 from a plant collected in Kenya, not Uganda as the specific epithet would imply but was later lumped it in with Clerodendrum myricoides. Clerodendrum myricoides had been originally described by Christian Ferdinand Friedrich Hochstetter, (1787-1860) in 1840 as Spironema myricoides but was shortly after this combined with Clerodendrum.

In 1998 a phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequences encouraged researchers to move this plant into the resurrected genus Rotheca, with its current name Rotheca myricoides ssp. myricoides and with 'Ugandense' as a cultivar name. This was published in 1998 in an article by David Mabberley, and Dorothy Steane titled "Rotheca (Lamiaceae) Revived" in Novon(V. 8 N. 2). This article indicated that the DNA evidence supported this included a key showing that Rotheca could be distinguished from Clerodendrum by a combination of morphological characters as well. They also noted that the species was noted as "comprising a perplexing complex of morphological variants and noted that the cultivar 'Ugandsis' is widely cultivated and known as Oxford and Cambridge Bush due to its dark blue and light blue lobes."

The genus name Rotheca comes from some combination of Malaysian words 'cheriga', which means "small", and 'thekku', which means "teak". The species epithet is thought to comes from a French word 'myriades' which means "ten thousand" and a Latinization of a Greek word 'oides' which means "to see" or "like" but others note it may be a reference to some similarity between this plant's leaf shape to a species in the genus Myrica, which would be the typical meaning of such an epithet.

Listed as Clerodendrum myricoides 'Ugandense' it was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit in 2002. We first started growing this plant in 1983 after discovering a small specimen in a neglected rather dry location in Franceschi Park, the Santa Barbara home and garden of the turn of the 19th century horticulturist Dr. Francesco Franceschi (AKA Emanuele Orazio Fenzi) and we grew and sold it (as Clerodendrum ugandense) until 2010. 

The information about Rotheca myricoides 'Ugandense' displayed on this web page is based on our research conducted in the nursery's horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also include observations made about it as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments we receive from others and welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share cultural information that would aid others in growing this plant.