1880.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



117 



cited by him, of "West Florida produce this or 

 the Eastern species, is at present unknown. 

 Flowers in May. This tree has quite an inter- 

 esting and instructive history. It was already 

 known to Michaux and to many botanists and 

 settlers of those regions ; even the aboriginal 

 Shawnees appreciated it, and the French set- 

 tlers along the Wabash named it for them the 

 Shawnee wood (Bois Chavanon) and prized the 

 indestructible quality of its timber ; but the 

 botanists, even the subtle Rafinesque, who 

 roamed over those very regions, seem to have 

 taken it for granted that it was not distinct 

 from the Southeastern Catalpa bignonioides. 

 To me the fact that these trees, then not rarely 

 cultivated in St. Louis,* produced their larger 

 and more showy flowers some ten or fifteen 

 days earlier than the Eastern or common kind, 

 was well known as early as 1842, and their 

 blossoming has since been annually recorded 

 in my notes on the advance of vegetation, but I 

 had not the sagacity or curiosity to further in- 

 vestigate the tree. It was reserved to Dr. J. A. 

 Warder, of Cincinnati, in 1853, to draw public 

 attention to it. He was struck with its beauty 

 in the streets of Dayton, Ohio, where a few 

 stragglers were cultivated, and described it cur- 

 sorily in his journal, the Western Horticul- 

 tural Review, Vol. Ill, page 533, without de- 

 ciding whether a distinct species or a variety, 

 and without assigning a name to it. It was 

 soon named, however, privately as it seems, by 

 him and his friends Catalpa speciosa, and was 

 propagated as a more ornamental form. Thir- 

 teen years later I find in the catalogue of J. C. 

 Teas' nursery, Baysville, Indiana, for 1866, Ca- 

 talpa speciosa offered, the 100 one year old 

 seedlings for $1.50. But only within the last 

 few years the beauty and importance of the tree 

 has made a greater impression on the public 

 mind, principally through the exertions of Dr. 

 Warder himself, Mr. E. E. Barney, of Dayton, 

 and Mr. R. Douglas, of Waukegan, 111. The 

 latter was so much struck with the future im- 

 portance of this species that in the Autumn of 

 1878 he collected on the lower Ohio 400 pounds 

 of its seed for his own nursery and for distribu- 

 tion to all parts of the world. 



Catalpa speciosa replaces C. bignonioides en- 

 tirely in the Mississippi valley. It is readily 

 distinguished from it by its taller and straighter 



* It seems singular that the common Eastern s])ecies na.s in 

 our streets almost completely supplanted the much handsomer 

 native. 



growth, its darker, thicker (i-1 inch thick), 

 rougher and scarcely exfoliating bark, (in 

 the older species it is light gray, constantly 

 peeling off and therefore not more than two or 

 three lines thick); its softly downy, slenderly 

 acuminate and inodorous leaves (those of big- 

 nonioides have a disagreeable, almost fetid odor 

 when touched), marked with similar glands in 

 the axils of the principal veins of the under 

 side by its much less crowded panicle, and by 

 its much larger flower, fruit and seed. The 

 flowers I found two inches in the vertical and a 

 little more in the transverse diameter. In the 

 other they have one and two-thirds inches in 

 each diameter ; the lower lobe is deeply notched 

 or bilobed in speciosa, entire in bignonioides ; 

 the tube in the former is conical and ten lines, 

 in the latter campanulate and about seven lines 

 long, in the first slightly oblique, in the other 

 very much so, the upper part being a great deal 

 shorter than the lower one, so that the anthers 

 and stigmat become uncovered. The markings 

 in the flower of the old species are much more 

 crowded and conspicuous, so as to give the 

 whole flower a dingy appearance, while ours 

 looks almost white. The upper lip of the co- 

 rolla before expansion extends beyond the 

 other lobes and covers them like a hood in the 

 Western species, while in the Eastern it is 

 much shorter than the others and covers them 

 only very partially. The pods of our species 

 are eight-twentieths inches long, seventeen- 

 twentieth lines in circumference, dark brown, 

 and strongly grooved. When dry, the placental 

 dissepiment very thick. In the Eastern species 

 the pod is nearly the same length, but only 

 nine-twelfth lines in circumference ; its grooves 

 very slight, its color pale, and the dissepiment 

 flat. In both species the pod is perfectly terete 

 before the valves separate, after that the valves 

 of ours remain more or less semiterete, while 

 the much thinner ones of the other flatten out 

 so that they seem to indicate a compressed pod. 

 The elongated seeds winged at both ends, are 

 of about equal length in both species, but in 

 speciosa they are much wider, (3i-4 lines), 

 and the wings have more or less rounded 

 ends which terminate in a broad band of rather 

 short hair. In bignonioides the seeds are only 



+ I may here remark that Catalpa, probably like all its allies, 

 is proterandrous, the anthers open in the morning and tlie lobes 

 of the stigma separate and become glutinous towards evening, 

 the upper lobe remaining erect, the lower turning down close 

 upon the style. I have not ascertained how they are imoreg- 

 nated as at that time the anthers are effete, and by the follow- 

 ing morning the lobes of the stigma are again elo.sed. 



