The Catalpas 



Preferred habitat, moist, rich soil of river banks or shady woods. 

 Distribution, Georgia and Florida to Mississippi, but natural- 

 ised in many other states. Uses: A hardy ornamental 

 tree; wood valuable for inside finish in houses, for posts and 

 railroad ties. 



The horse chestnut with its thousand pyramids of bloom is 

 scarcely past its prime v/hen a rival of surpassing loveliness appears. 

 Out of the deadest-looking branches, which show no sign of life 

 until spring has sown meadow and wood with blossoms, a lux- 

 uriant crown of bright foliage comes, and with a rush, as if to 

 make up lost time, the tree bursts into bloom. 



Now the awkwardness of its frame is forgotten, and the 

 tree looks like a plant from the tropics. The flower clusters are 

 often 10 inches high, loosely conical and blooming from the base 

 upward. 



A single flower deserves close scrutiny. The green calyx 

 that enclosed the bud splits in two and the white corolla, with 

 its spreading, scalloped and ruffied border, unfolds. There are 

 five lobes turning out from the deep throat of the flower, where 

 groups and rows of yellow and purple dots adorn the lining. 

 The bumblebees recognise these markings as an invitation to 

 explore the nectaries of the flower, and the fragrance further 

 reassures them. The two stamens are ripe before the stigma 

 that rises between them. A bee that alights on the broad plat- 

 form and pushes into the flower's depths for nectar is well brushed 

 with pollen as she passes. This she loses to the sticky stigmas 

 of other blossoms as she pursues her vocation in the honey-laden 

 treetops. A later comer to that first blossom might note, if she 

 were observant, that the stamens had wilted in the few hours 

 just past, and it is the erect stigma that is brushed with pollen 

 from her hairy body. Thus Nature prevents self-pollination in 

 this species, and sends the unconscious bees to cross-fertilise 

 catalpa flowers. 



The pods that hang on the trees in late summer look like 

 long green pencils. The tree is as much a wonder in fruit as in 

 flower. In winter time, the two<thin valves split, and out tumbles 

 a multitude of seeds! There is nothing to them — just thin, 

 papery flakes an inch long, fraying at both ends into silvery hairs. 

 The wind scatters them far and near, and the streams float them 

 toward the seas. So the catalpa seeds are spread. The trees 



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