274 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 



SIR WALTER RALEIGH AND FRANCIS BACON ADMIRERS OF 



THE CATALPA. 



A Bit of History. 



(New York Tribune, October, 4, 1905.) 



There is in the garden of Gray's Inn a fine specimen of the North Ameri- 

 can Catalpa bignonioidcs. In Timbs' "Curiosities of London" this tree is 

 stated to have been "raised from one planted by Lord Bacon." Francis 

 Bacon certainly directed the laying out of the garden in 1598-1600, planting 

 elms and quickset hedges, and nowadays, says "Nature Notes," one hesi- 

 tates before saying that there is anything he did not do, from writing 

 Shakespeare's plays downward; but it is not probable that he planted a ca- 

 talpa. This tree was found by Mark Catesby on the banks of the Ohio and 

 the Mississippi, and brought to Carolina about 1725 and to England in 1726. 

 Its name is probably a corruption of Catawba, that of an Indian tribe, while 

 its local Brench name is "Bois Shavanon," from the Shavanon (now the 

 Cumberland) River. London Globe. 



The New York Tribune of October 4, 1905, printed the above item from the 

 London Globe. 



On page 98, ARBORICULTURE for January, 1903. gave a brief history of this 

 celebrated tree, as follows : 



"In 1586 the remnants of Sir Walter Raleigh's first colony, on their return 

 to London, took with them three "-valuable American products the potato, 

 tobacco, and a catalpa tree. Raleigh gave the tree to Sir Francis Bacon, who 

 planted it in the garden of Gray's Inn, which at that time was the resort of 

 scholars and the nobility of England. A seedling from this tree is still alive, 

 or was recently, but in a decrepit condition. As this tree was from Virginia, 

 of which North Carolina was then a part, it was doubtless bignonioidcs." 



Thus we see what an interest has been manifested in this American tree 

 for more than three hundred years. 



The London Globe is somewhat in error as to the tree coming from the 

 banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi. The Catalpa spcciosa had its home on 

 the Wabash River, in Indiana, some trees extending down the Ohio and as far 

 as New Madrid, Missouri, on the shores of the Mississippi. 



Catalpa bignonoidcs was indigenous to the State of Virginia, which 

 then comprised much of the South Atlantic Coast region, including North 

 Carolina. 



