274 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 
SIR WALTER RALEIGH AND FRANCIS BACON ADMIRERS OF 
THE CATALPA. 
A Bit of History. 
(New York Tribune, October, 4, 1905.) 
There is in the garden of Gray's Inn a fine specimen of the North Ameri- 
can Catalpa megien ions: In Timbs’ “Curiosities of London” this tree is 
stated to have been “raised from one planted by Lord Bacon.” Francis 
Bacon certainly directed the laying out of the perden in 1598-1600, planting 
elms and quickset hedges, and nowadays, says “Nature Notes,” one hesi- 
tates before saying that there is anything he did not do, from writing 
Shakespeare's plays downward; but it is not probable that he planted a ca- 
talpa. This tree was found by Mark Catesby on the banks of the Ohio and 
the Mississippi, and brought to Carolina about 1725 and to England in 1720. 
Its name is probably a corruption of Catawba, that of an Indian tribe, while 
its local Grench name is “Bois Shavanon,” from the Shavanon (now the 
Cumberland) River.— London Globe. 
The New York Tribune of October 4, 1905, printed the above item from the 
London Globe. 
On page o8, ARBORICULTURE for January. 1903, gave a brief history of this 
celebrated tree, as follows: 
“Tn 1586 the remnants of Sir Walter Raleigh’s first colony, on their return 
London, took with them three valuable American products—the potato, 
tobacco, and a catalpa tree. Raleigh gave the tree to Sir Francis Bacon, who 
planted it in the garden of Gray's Inn, which at that time was the resort of 
scholars and the nobility of England. A seedling from this tree 1s still alive, 
or was recently, but in a decrepit condition. As this tree was from Virginia, 
of which North Carolina was then a part, it was doubtless bignonioides.” 
Thus we see what an interest has been manifested in this American tree 
for more than three hundred vears. 
The London Globe is somewhat in error as to the tree coming from the 
banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi. The Catalpa speciosa had its home on 
the Wabash River, in Indiana, some trees extending down the Ohio and as far 
as New Madrid, Missouri, on the shores of the Mississippi. 
Catalpa bignonoides was indigenous to the State of Virginia, which 
then comprised much of the South Atlantic Coast region, including North 
Carolina. 
