April 1902.] The Hardy Catdlpa; , '>":*>, :; ; ^ ; , 101 



eminent botanist, Doctor Engelmann, of St. Louis, had noted as early 

 as 1842 that there was a difference of about two weeks in the dates 

 of flowering of the catalpa trees in that city, as well as a difference in 

 the size and showiness of the flowers ; but it did not become ap- 

 parent that the larger flowered, earlier variety was the indigenous 

 Western or hardy catalpa, and that the other was the Southeastern 

 species, by that time quite generally introduced through the West, and 

 most commonly known and planted. 



The credit for this discovery attaches to Dr. John A. Warder, of 

 Ohio, editor of the Western Horticultural Review, whose attention 

 was called in 1853 to the observable differences in locally cultivated 

 catalpa trees by one of the members of the firm of J. C. & E. Y. 

 Teas, nurserymen of Raysville, Ind., who had obtained from Dr. Job 

 Haines, an amateur nurseryman, of Dayton, Ohio, seed of the earlier 

 blooming and larger flowered catalpa. Warder became convinced that 

 the tree in question was a constant variant from the commonly ac- 

 cepted and generally grown "type" of catalpa, and described it as such 

 informally in the columns of the Western Horticultural Review, 

 volume 3. page 533. Later, it seems to have been called by Warder 

 and others C. Mgnonioides, var. speciosa, so named an account of the 

 showy flowers, but it was regarded as being simply a more ornamental 

 form of the ordinary catalpa. 



In Teas Bros.' catalogue for 1856, Doctor Engelmann found the 

 tree for sale as Catalpa speciosa, and in the Botanical Gazette, vol- 

 ume 5, page 1 (January. 1880), on the basis of his diagnosis of its 

 characters, he made it known to science as a distinct species, under 

 the name of Catalpa speciosa, Warder. Ever since then the distinc- 

 tions between the two forms have been clear to botanists. 



In the meantime, from various foci, seeds and seedlings of C. spe- 

 ciosa had been moving over the West* Gen. William Henry Harri- 

 son, on leaving Vincennes, Ind., his seat of residence as governor of 

 the Northwest territory, for his home in Ohio, carried seed of the 

 Western catalpa with him, and distributed it among his neighbors. 

 He seems to have been greatly impressed with the enduring charac- 

 ter of its timber when in contact with the soil. 



A chance visitor from Kentucky to Washtenaw county, Michigan, 

 carried a pod of C. speciosa to a Mr. Bennet of that locality, from 

 whom, in 1844, two plants reached Mr. Joel T. Griffin, a nurseryman 

 of Omaha, Neb., who became the medium for its distribution through 

 that region. 



Mr. Suel Foster, a resident of Muscatine, Iowa, who, in 1853, ob- 

 tained catalpa trees derived from the stock in the Teas Bros.'' nursery, 



