Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. VI 
NO. 13 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN. MASS. JULY 15. 1920 
Catalpas are trees of the Bignonia Family and grow naturally only 
in eastern North America, the West Indies and northern and central 
China. They all have large simple leaves, and large terminal clusters 
of two-lipped flowers followed by long slender pods containing many 
thin seeds furnished at the ends with long tufts of pale hairs. All the 
Catalpas and one or two of their hybrids are growing in the Arboretum 
with the exception of the species from the West Indies. The first 
Catalpa, C. bignonioides, which attracted the attention of botanists and 
gardeners was sent from South Carolina to England early in the eight- 
eenth century. This for a long time was the only American species 
cultivated in Europe or the United States, but forty or fifty years ago 
it became known that another species grew in the valley of the Ohio 
River and southward along the Mississippi River as far south as west- 
ern Tennessee and northeastern Arkansas. To this Catalpa the name 
speciosa has been well given as it is now known to be the largest, the 
fastest growing, the hardiest and the handsomest of all Catalpa-trees. 
It is the earliest of all the species, too, to bloom, and it is now cov- 
ered with flowers which are larger than those of the other species. 
On the rich alluvial bottom lands of the Mississippi River this tree has 
often grown to the height of one hundred and twenty feet and formed 
a trunk four and a half feet in diameter. In New England it will 
never grow to that size, but although it was introduced into the east- 
ern states less than fifty years ago trees in eastern Massachusetts are 
already fully forty feet high and have been flowering and ripening 
their seeds for many years. Catalpas produce soft wood which is re- 
markably durable when it comes in contact with the soil, and in some 
of the middle western states large plantings of Catalpa speciosa have 
been made to supply fence-posts, for which the wood is admirably 
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