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 displayed on this page about Rotheca myricoides 'Ugandense' is based on our research conducted about this plant from books in our nursery library as well as from information that is provided by reliable online resources. We also have included our own observations made about it as it grew in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers when we had them in our nursery field. We also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.