BIGNONIACE^E 793 



the iuner accrescent, thin scaly bark, soft light-colored wood, and fibrous roots. 

 Leaves opposite or in verticels of 3, involute in the bud, entire or lobed, oblong- 

 ovate, often cordate, long-petiolate, deciduous. Flowers on slender bracteolate ped- 

 icels, 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 authesis splitting nearly to the base into 2 broadly 

 ovate entire pointed apiculate lobes; corolla thin, membranaceous, 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 bilabiate 

 limb, with spreading lips undulate on the margins, the posterior 2-parted, the ante- 

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

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

 thers oblong, 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 anthe- 

 sis; staminodia 3, free, filiform, minute or rudimentary; ovary 2-celled, sessile on 

 the hypogynous nearly obsolete disk, abruptly contracted into an elongated filiform 

 style divided at the 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, 

 and ultimately splitting loculicidally into 2 valves. Seeds numerous, compressed, 

 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 

 the 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 being North American. Catalpa con- 

 tains a bitter principle and is a tonic and diuretic, and produces soft straight-grained 

 durable wood. 



The generic name is that by which one of the North American species was known 

 among the Cherokee Indians. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES. 



Flowers in many-flowered crowded panicles ; calyx glabrous ; corolla thickly spotted on the 

 inner surface ; fruit slender, thin-walled ; leaves short-acuminate. 



1. C. Catalpa (C). 



Flowers in few-flowered open panicles ; calyx often sparingly villose or pubescent ; corolla 

 inconspicuously spotted ; fruit stout, thick-walled ; leaves caudate-acuminate. 



2. C. speciosa (A, C). 



1. Catalpa Catalpa, Karst. Catalpa. Indian Bean. 



Leaves broadly ovate, rather abruptly contracted into slender points or some- 

 times rounded at the apex, cordate at the base, entire or often laterally lobed, when 

 they unfold coated below with pale tomentum and pilose above, and at maturity 

 thin and firm, light green and glabrous on the upper, pale and pubescent on the 

 lower surface, 5'-6' long and 4'-5' wide, with prominent midribs and primary veins 

 arcuate near the margins, connected by reticulate veinlets and furnished in the 



