870 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



porous soil; valley of the lower Rio Grande, and through western Texas, southern New 

 Mexico, Arizona, southern Utah and Nevada to San Jacinto Valley, San Diego County, 

 California; in northern Mexico and Lower California (Calamujuit). 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in the southern states, and in Mexico. 



2. CATALPA Scop. 



Trees, with stout terete branchlets, without a terminal bud, minute globose axillary 

 buds nearly immersed in the bark and covered by numerous scales, the inner accrescent, 

 thick pith, thin scaly bark, soft light-colored wood very durable in contact with the soil, 

 and fibrous roots. Leaves opposite or in verticels of 3, involute in the bud, entire or 

 lobed, oblong-ovate, often cordate, long-petiolate, deciduous. Flow r ers on slender bracte- 

 olate pedicels, in terminal compound trichotomously branched panicles or corymbs, with 

 linear-lanceolate deciduous bracts and bractlets; calyx membranaceous, subglobose, closed 

 and apiculate in the bud, in anthesis splitting nearly to the base into 2 broad-ovate entire 

 pointed apiculate lobes; corolla thin, variously marked and spotted on the inner surface, 

 inserted on the nearly obsolete disk, the tube broad, campanulate, occasionally furnished 

 on the upper side near the base with an external lobed appendage, and oblique and enlarged 

 above into a broad limb, with spreading lips undulate on the margin, the posterior 2-parted, 

 the anterior deeply 3-lobed; stamens and staminodia inserted near the base of the corolla; 

 stamens 2, anterior, included or slightly exserted; filaments flattened, arcuate; anthers ob- 

 long, carried to the rear of the corolla and face to face on either side of the stigma by a 

 half turn of the filaments near their base, the cells divergent in anthesis; staminodia 3, free, 

 filiform, minute or rudimentary; ovary 2-celled, sessile oh the hypogynous nearly obsolete 

 disk, abruptly contracted into an elongated filiform style divided at apex into 2 stigmatic 

 lobes exserted above the anthers; ovules inserted in many series on a central placenta. 

 Fruit an elongated subterete capsule tapering from the middle to the ends, persistent on 

 the branches during the winter, ultimately splitting into 2 valves. Seeds numerous, com- 

 pressed, oblong, inserted in 2-4 ranks near the margin of the flat or more or less thickened 

 woody septum free from the walls of the capsule; seed-coat thin, light brown or silvery gray, 

 longitudinally veined, produced into broad lateral wings notched at base of the seed and 

 divided at their narrowed or rounded ends into tufts of long coarse white hairs; cotyledons 

 plane, broader than long, slightly 2-lobed, rounded laterally; radicle short, erect, turned 

 toward the oblong conspicuous basal hilum. 



Catalpa with seven species is confined to the eastern United States, the West Indies, and 

 eastern China, two of the species beJna North American. Catalpa contains a bitter princi- 

 ple and is a tonic and diuretic. 



