The panicles of flowers are a little reminiscent of horse chestnut flowers. In Catalpa each flower is much larger and the whole panicle is not as neatly-shaped.
This example is on Albany Road in Chorlton. I took all these photos today in a light rain under a lead-grey sky. I had not noticed they were in flower soon enough to plan to take my camera out during the recent heatwave. At least I did not have to cope with the glare of the bright white flowers overwhelming the camera's optics.
Catalpa bignonioides flowers.
The markings on the flowers vary quite a lot on the one tree.
The tree is covered in flowers.
The flowers are mildly fragrant. I can only describe the fragrance as pleasant but nondescript. Perhaps a little like a Dame's Violet, Hesperis matronalis. The leaves have been described as smelling bad when crushed but freshly-crushed leaves just smelled like freshly-crushed leaves to me.
Catalpa bignonioides is called southern catalpa, cigar-tree and Indian bean. Catalpa is from a Native American name for the plant, kutuhlpa from the Muscogee Creek Confederacy. The use of catawba is a mistake that arose from a very early European confusion with the name of the Catawba tribe of Native Americans. The northern catalpa is Catalpa speciosa, only slightly more northerly in its distribution in North America and much rarer, originally.
The specific name bignonioides means "similar to a Bignonia". The first European description did identify it as a type of Bignonia. Botanists still consider it to be similar enough to the Bignonia genus to put it in the family Bignoniaceae.
Catalpa bignonioides is, of course, neither Indian nor a bean. The pods do look like a bean, however. Both the pods and leaves are about 25cm (10 inches) long. The idea that it was dangerous to smell the plant for a long time has been generally disbelieved for many years. The timber was used for many purposes such as fence-posts and railway ties, especially as it was rot-resistant when in contact with the soil. In the late 1800s there was a craze for planting both northern and southern catalpa for timber in the USA.
Catalpa bignonioides seedpods still on the tree from last year.
As a cigar it looks a little impoverished.
Catalpa bignonioides showing the winged seeds
characteristic of the family Bignoniaceae.
Despite its southern origin the tree has been found to be remarkably hardy. The tree is quite happy to grow in all of the UK, northern Europe and southern Canada. The fact that the leaves do not come out until quite late in the Spring may have helped it to adapt to cooler areas. I have not seen self-sown seedlings in Manchester. Yet.
The bark is covered with tiny patches of different lichens
and the occasional tuft of moss.
There is another Catalpa at the Albert Square end of Brazennose Street in the centre of Manchester. The flowers are more or less over now and the leaves look more ragged than the one in Chorlton. I think it gets less light due to the tall buildings so close to it which explains why the trunk is sloped towards the Square. However, it gets more shelter from cold winds. There do seem to be more pods that have split open from being ripe than on the one in Chorlton.
Brazennose Street
Leaning toward the light,
There are 18 Paulownia trees in St Peter's Square that could be confused with a Catalpa unless you look closely. The leaves of the Paulownia are darker, longer and thinner. The canopy is neater and more compact. The flowers come earlier in the year than the Catalpa and are a similar shape but come in various shades of purple. These particular trees are probably a variety of Paulownia tomentosa.This plant was originally called Bignonia tomentosa. Paulownia is now placed in a small family called the Paulowniaceae that is somewhere between the Bignoniaceae of Catalpa and the eyebright and broomrape family Orobanchaceae, now split from the foxglove family Scrophulariaceae. There is a species found in Shandong in China that is called Paulownia catalpifolia, meaning catalpa-leaved.
Paulownia leaves.
Paulownia tree outside Manchester Town Hall.
Paulownia flowers in May 2019 in Poland.
Photographer: Niepokój Zbigniew from
Wikicommons and his blog color anxiety.
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
Bignoniaceae
The family Bignoniaceae has many trees, climbers and herbs in the Americas, Africa and Asia that mostly look spectacular when in flower. The Plant List has 852 accepted species in 86 genera with 322 species names as yet unassessed. Many of the plants are used locally for timber, food, dyes, assorted knick-knacks and utensils, in local medicines and as large-flowered ornamentals.
Mansoa difficilis flowers.
La Paz, Bolivia. Photo: © N. Paniagua from Tropicos
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Dolichandra quadrivalvis flowers.
Guárico State, Venezuela. Photo: © Alwyn Howard Gentry from Tropicos
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
The perfumed flowers of Dolichandra quadrivalvis.
Previously called Melloa quadrivalvis.
Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photo: William Milliken.
© Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Creative Commons Attribution CC BY?
Dolichandra quadrivalvis vines are used to stun crabs in northern Colombia. Specialist crab-hunters mix stem shavings with bananas as bait and leave them near crab burrows. The crabs recover by the time they get to market.
For some reason the tropical East African Fernandoa magnifica
has been cultivated as an ornamental.
Zomba Plateau, Malawi. © Margaret Westrop. African Plants, A Photo Guide
Free use for non-commercial scientific or educational purposes.
Kigelia africana fruits, the "sausages".
Malawi. © Günther Baumann. African Plants, A Photo Guide
Free use for non-commercial scientific or educational purposes.
The wood is tough and used for making canoes, etc. The green fruit are said to be poisonous and the fresh, ripe fruit is too purgative and blistering to be eaten. The roasted fruit are used in making beer. The fruit are used in many traditional remedies. The fruit extracts are used in many cosmetics, now being sold all over the world. An extract of the bark is now being peddled as a dodgy sports supplement.
Kigelia africana flowers produce abundant nectar and
are pollinated by dwarf epauletted fruit bats, Micropteropus pusillus.
are pollinated by dwarf epauletted fruit bats, Micropteropus pusillus.
Bathurst, Gambia. © Kim Taylor/Warren Photographic.
African Plants, A Photo Guide
African Plants, A Photo Guide
Free use for non-commercial scientific or educational purposes.
Foliage, flowers and fruit of Millingtonia hortensis.
Marianne North, India - painted in 1878.
For more on the painter, visit Kew.
© Board of Trustees, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
Marianne North, India - painted in 1878.
For more on the painter, visit Kew.
© Board of Trustees, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
Default Creative Commons Attribution CC BY?
Millingtonia hortensis is a large tree native to southeast Asia but cultivated in India. In Hindi the name is नीम चमेली neem chameli, meaning "the jasmine neem tree". The bark is used as an inferior substitute for cork, giving it the name Indian cork tree. The highly fragrant flowers are plaited together for ornamental garlands called veni in Maharashtra.
Nyctocalos brunfelsiiflora.
Choix de plantes rares ou nouvelles, etc. by Friedrich Miquel (1864).
From the Internet Archive.
Nyctocalos brunfelsiiflora was called kakatjangan in Java and the crushed leaves are applied against headaches and stomachaches. In his Choix de plantes rares ou nouvelles, etc. of 1864, Friedrich Miquel wrote of Nyctocalos brunfelsiaeflorus collected from Java that it was a rapidly climbing shrub that flowered abundantly. The flowers opened at six o'clock in the evening with a sweet fragrance but only lasted the one night. Also:
...this plant can easily be multiplied by cuttings and, without doubt, forms one of the most beautiful ornaments of our greenhouses.Nyctocalos thomsonii (now Nyctocalos cuspidatum) had much larger, white flowers and was available from a nursery in New Rochelle, New York in 1889 for 50 cents. The decline in popularity of stove plants in both the UK and USA since then has led to many hypertropical plants falling out of general cultivation.
In the original French:
...cette plante peut facilement se multiplier par des marcottes et formera sans doute un des plus beaux ornements de nos serres.
Incarvillea compacta is used in Tibetan herbal medicine.
Hengduan Mountains, between Tibet and Yunnan.
Credit: Harvard University Herbaria
The majority of the family are from hot tropical regions but there are some from cooler climates. Many members of the genus Incarvillea are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, such as Incarvillea sinensis from most of China and as far north as Inner Mongolia and Incarvillea delavayi from 2400 to 3900 metres (7,800 to 12,700 feet) high in the mountains of Yunnan. These gorgeous herbs are available as seeds and plants (more species) for growing as ornamentals in the UK.
Incarvillea delavayi white, Incarvillea zhongdianensis,
Incarvillea delavayi dark and normal.
Incarvillea delavayi dark and normal.
Cropped from original photo: peganum from Wikicommons.
.jpg){kind=link}