Nature Bulletin No. 343-A   May 3, 1969
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
George W. Dunne, President
Roland F Eisenbeis, Supt. of Conservation

****:THE CATALPA

During the summer of 1905 we were hired by the T. P. & W. Railroad, 
which runs east and west across central Illinois, to tend the thousands of 
young Catalpa trees planted along its right-of-way. Other railroads had 
similar plantations in various parts of the country, some of them very 
large, from which they expected to grow their own timber for ties, 
telegraph poles and fence posts. Thousands of farmers, especially in the 
treeless midwestern prairies, had or were planting windbreaks and 
orchard-like woodlots of Catalpa. It was known to be a very fast 
growing tree in the Ohio valley where it was native, and erroneously 
supposed to be exceptionally durable in contact with the soil -- equal to 
cedar, black locust, mulberry, osage orange and other species notable 
for this desirable quality.

Most of these plantations proved disappointing and were abandoned or 
destroyed. The catalpa boom collapsed. The fad was largely due, 
apparently, to the fanatical efforts of one man: an Indiana engineer who 
was secretary of an organization called the International Society of 
Arboriculture. He tirelessly publicized the virtues of the "Hardy 
Catalpa", making extravagant statements which he sincerely believed. 
At the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, in 1904, he placed 
an elaborate exhibit, including the interior of a Pullman car, to 
demonstrate the many uses which he insisted could be made of this tree 
and why it should be extensively planted.

Catalpa is the Cherokee Indian name, adopted by early settlers, for the 
Common Catalpa -- a species native in the South Atlantic states and the 
lower Mississippi Valley. Although they flourished widely during the 
Ice Age, there are now only seven species: two native in the United 
States and five in the West Indies and China. Several hybrid and 
horticultural varieties, such as the Umbrella Catalpa, have been 
developed for ornamental and formal effects.

The Northern or Hardy Catalpa has been widely planted for ornamental 
purposes, or as a street tree, and has become naturalized throughout 
most of the northeastern states. It is extensively used for windbreaks 
and shelterbelts in Nebraska, Kansas, and other western states. It attains 
a maximum height of about 120 feet and diameters of four or five feet 
in the rich bottomlands of the Wabash and Ohio River Valleys but is 
ordinarily much smaller and makes very unsatisfactory growth on poor 
clay or gravelly soils, This and the use of seed from the other species -- 
a smaller, less hardy tree -- were two of the reasons why most of those 
early plantations failed. Further, catalpa is subject to severe damage by 
insects -- especially the larvae of a sphinx moth -- to a fungus that 
causes wilt, to root rot, and to a white spongy rot that enters through a 
wound or a dead branch and decays the heartwood. Unless kept 
carefully pruned, many catalpas are killed by such damage before they 
mature.

Northern catalpa, growing in the open, usually has a rather short 
crooked trunk and thick straggling branches. Its course-grained wood is 
very light, soft and weak. The pointed heart-shaped leaves may be from 
7 to 12 inches long and 5 to 8 inches wide. They turn black after the 
first hard frost in autumn. In June the tree is literally covered with 
clusters of large trumpet-shaped flowers -- white but flecked with 
lavender and yellow -- that have a cloying odor. They are followed by 
very long bean-like pods that hang on until nearly spring, when they 
split open and liberate quantities of flat winged seeds. As boys, we tried 
to smoke these "cigars" but they made us sick.

The larva of the catalpa sphinx moth is a favorite bait for panfish.