290 The Catalpas. 



SOUTHEEN CATALPA (Catalpa bignonoides*). 1 



1179. This tree h found native in Georgia and other Southern 

 States, but has been widely cultivated for ornament in the Middle 

 States and in Europe, where the climate is not too cold. It is 

 found susceptible to frost, and sometimes, after several years of 

 apparent success, it will suffer great injury, or be wholly killed by 

 i\ hard winter following a season that favored a late growth. 



1180. Under favorable conditions, it grows with great rapidity, 

 f.nd to a large size, being fifty feet or more in height, and from 

 c ighteen to twenty inches in diameter. It has large showy blos- 

 .': mis, broad leaves, a silver-gray bark, which is but slightly fur- 

 r>wed, and a wide spreading top. The branches are relatively 

 fyvv in number, and the capsules long, cylindrical, and pendant. 

 The wood is grayish -white, of fine texture, and brilliant when pol- 

 iohed, much resembling that of the butternut, but of less reddish 

 hue and of greater durability. 



1181. HARDY CATALPA (Catalpa speciosa). For many years 

 there has been cultivated in Ohio, Indiana, and other Northern and 

 Western States a form of catalpa that was long considered a hardy 

 variety of the C. bignonoides. It was found to be not only hardy, 

 but very durable. Its habit was more erect, growing in dense 

 groves, with stems 50 feet in height ; the bark was more closely ad- 

 herent and furrowed vertically, much like that of the white ash. 

 The flowers are larger, nearly pure white, and about three weeks 

 earlier than the other species. 



1182. It is described by Dr. Engelmann (omitting the technical 

 description of the flowers) as follows: 2 "A middle-sized tree, with 

 grayish-brown, much cracked or furrowed, at la-t slightly flaky 

 bark, and light-yellowish gray wood ; leaves large, truncated, or 

 more or less cordate at base, slender, acuminate, soft, downy on the 

 under side, inodorous. . . . Common in the low, rich, some- 

 times overflowed woodlands near the mouth of the Ohio, along the 

 lower course of that river and its confluence, and in the adjoining 

 lowlands of the Mississippi, in the States of Illinois, Indiana, Ken- 



1 Thus named by Walther. It is named C. cordifolia by Elliott; C. syr- 

 ini/aefolia by Sims, and Bignonia catalpa by Michaux. 

 ^Botanical Gazette, V. No. 1, January, 1880. 



