April 1902.] The Hardy Catalpa. 103 



unfold they are coated on the lower surface with a pale tomentum, and are pilose 

 on the upper surface; and at maturity they are thin and firm, light green and 

 glabrous above, pale and pubescent below, five or six inches long and four or five 

 inches broad, with stout, terete petioles five or six inches in length, prominent 

 midribs and primary veins arcuate near the margins, connected by reticulate 

 veinlets, and furnished in their axils with clusters of dark glands. They smell 

 disagreeably when bruised, and turn black and fall to the ground after the first 

 frost of the autumn. The flowers, which appear from May in the South to July 

 in New England, are produced in compact, many-flowered panicles eight or ten 

 inches long or broad, with light green branches tinged with purple, and are 

 borne in slender pubescent pedicels half an inch in length. The calyx is half an 

 inch in length, and green or light purple. The corolla is white, with a broad, 

 companulate, flat tube, and spreading limb, which, when it is expanded, is an 

 inch and a half wide and nearly two inches long; it is marked on the inner sur- 

 face on the lower side with two rows of yellow blotches following the parallel 

 lateral ridges or folds, and in the throat and on the lower lobes of the limb with 

 crowded conspicuous purple spots. The stamens and the style are slightly ex- 

 serted. The fruit, which ripens in the autumn, hangs in thick-branched, 

 orange-colored panicles, and remains on the trees without opening during the 

 winter ; it is six to twenty inches long, a quarter to a third of an inch thick in 

 the middle, with a thin wall, which is bright chestnut-brown on the outside and 

 light olive-brown and lustrous on the inside, and in the spring splits into two flat 

 valves before finally falling ; the partition is thin and light brown. The seed is 

 about an inch long, a quarter of an inch wide, silvery gray, with pointed wingp, 

 terminating in long, pencil-shaped tufts of white hairs. 



" Catalpa catalpa is usually supposed to be indigenous on the banks of the 

 rivers of southwestern Georgia, western Florida, and central Alabama and Mis- 

 sissippi. The hardiness of this tree, however, in severe climates like that of New 

 England, would indicate an origin in some colder and more elevated region, and 

 it is possible that the catalpa trees which now appear to be growing naturally in 

 the Southern states are the offspring of trees carried there by man. 



" The wood of Catalpa catalpa is soft, not strong, coarse-grained, and very 

 durable in contact with the soil, with numerous obscure medullary rays and rows 

 of large open ducts clearly marking the layers of annual growth ; it is light brown, 

 with lighter colored, often nearly white sap-wood, composed of one or two layers 

 of annual growth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.4474, a 

 cubic foot weighing 27.88 pounds. It is used, and highly valued, for fence-posts, 

 rails and other purposes where durable wood is needed. 



"The bark, which contains tannin and an amorphous bitter principle, has been 

 occasionally used, as well as the seeds, in decoctions for the treatment of bron- 

 chitis, and in homeopathic practice." ("The Silva of North America," Charles 

 Sprague Sargent, vol. VI, p. 86.) 



Oatalpa speciosa Warder. 



Catalpa cordifolia Jaume, in Nouveau Duhamel, II, t. 5 (1802), not 



Moench (1794). 

 Catalpa bignonioides Lesquereux, in Owen's 2d Rep. Arkan. 375 (1860), 



not Walter (1788). 

 Catalpa speciosa (Warder, in Hort.) Engelmann, in Bot. Gaz., vol. V, 1 



(1880). 



