Description | Northern Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) A large growing tree with a great floral display in June. |
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Plant Type | Trees Deciduous, Site author's observations |
Hardiness Zone | 4-8 |
Sunlight | full |
Moisture | average |
Soil & Site | tolerant of many different soil conditions. |
Flowers | white panicles with yellow and purple markings blooming in June |
Fruit | long pea shaped brown pendulous capsules 8-20" long, seeds are fringed |
Leaves | large, deltoid, medium green, tend to drop early in the fall, no fall color |
Dimensions | a large tree 40-60' high by 20-40' spread |
Maintenance | lots of petals to rake after flowering, lots of seed pods to rake in the fall |
Propagation | I have put the seeds in pots and over wintered in a cold frame and they have readily germinated. Some references state no stratification is needed. |
Native Site | North America and China |
Misc Facts | AKA: northern catalpa, hardy catalpa, western catalpa, cigar tree, catawba-tree, or bois chavanon |
Author's Notes | In the area where I live there are a lot of Catalpa that have been planted as ornamentals. I enjoy seeing all of the trees come into flower in June. After the flowers are done we get "Catalpa Snow" from all the flower petals. |
Notes & Reference | #01-Manual of Woody Landscape Plants (Michael Dirr), #03-The Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs (Hillier Nursery), #181-Native Trees for North America (Guy Sternberg) |