The Universal Herbal: Bignonia Catalpa; Common Catalpa Tree.

The Universal Herbal;
or botanical, medical and agricultural dictonary.
Containing an account of All the known Plants in the World, arranged according to the Linnean system. Specifying the uses to which they are or may be applied, whether as food, as medicine, or in the arts and manufactures.
With the best methods of propagation, and the most recent agricultural improvements.
collected from indisputable Authorities.
Adapted to the use of the farmer - the gardener - the husbandman - the botanist - the florist - and country housekeepers in general.
By Thomas Green.
Vol. I
Liverpool.
Printed at the Caxton Press by Henri Fisher.
Printer in Ordinary to His Majesty.
1824Leaves simple, cordate; stem erect; seeds winged with membranes. — The branches dye wool a kind of cinnamon colour. Thunberg mentions, that the Japanese lay the leaves on parts of the body affected with pains, supposing them to be beneficial to the nerves; and that a decoction of the pods is esteemed useful in the asthma. The seeds of this tree are usually imported from South Carolina. The seedling plants should be placed abroad in the beginning of June, in a sheltered situation, till autumn, when they should be placed under a common frame, to screen them from frost in winter; but in mild weather they must be fully exposed to the open air. The following spring these may be taken out of the pots, and planted in a nursery bed in a warm situation, where they may remain two years to get strength, and be afterwards planted where they are designed to remain. These plants, when young, are frequently injured by frost, for they shoot pretty late in autumn, so that the early frosts often kill the extremity of their branches; but as the plants advance in strength, they become more hardy, and are seldom injured but in very severe winters. It is late in the spring before these trees come out, which has often caused persons to believe they were dead, and some have been so imprudent as to cut them down on that supposition, before the tree was well known. It may also be propagated by cuttings, which should be planted in pots in the spring, before the trees begin to push out their shoots, and plunged into a moderate hot-bed, observing to shade them from the sun in the middle of the day, and refresh them occasionally with water, which must not be given them in too great plenty. In about six weeks these will have taken root, and made shoots above, so should have plenty of air admitted to them constantly, and hardened by degrees to bear the open air, into which they should be removed, and treated in the same manner as the seedling plants, and the spring following planted out into a nursery-bed, as is before directed. The catalpa delights in a moist soil, where it will make great progress, and in a few years produce flowers.