94 THE APOTHECARIES' GARDEN 



is useful. In the Inner Temple there is a 

 cabinet made from the wood of a Catalpa 

 which grew in the garden where the Wars of 

 the Roses began. 



In Gray's Inn Gardens a venerable Catalpa 

 has a label : " Said to have been planted by 

 Francis Bacon when Master of the Walks in 

 1598." But the Catalpa, botanists say, was not 

 seen in England until 1728, when it was brought 

 over by Mark Catesby, an explorer and naturalist. 

 Catesby, on an expedition to which Sir Hans 

 Sloane had contributed, found the Common 

 Catalpa in Carolina, near the river Catawba. 

 Hence possibly its name. So the Bacon legend 

 must take its "place among others which have 

 grown up round the great Elizabethan like ivy 

 on a dead oak. 



Japanese Catalpas were later arrivals. The 

 one in the Physic Garden was struck by 

 lightning some years ago, but the stem escaped. 

 The lightning must ha/e passed through the 

 mass of dripping leaves hanging near the 

 ground. It only destroyed one large branch. 



At Holland House there is an American 

 Catalpa, the bole of which, the largest in 

 London, is 8ft. loin, in girth at five feet from 

 the ground. 1 



Another of the old trees is a Persimmon 

 from the southern States of N. America, where 

 its fruit ripens, but only becomes sweet and 

 bearable after a wholesome chastening of frost. 



On the north wall is a Loquat Japanese 

 Medlar growing well ; its great crinkled leaves 

 defying the London smoke. Its fruit like the 



1 Webster, London Trees, p. 169. 



