Catalpa Species, Catawba, Cigar Tree, Fish-Bait Tree, Indian Bean Tree, Southern Catalpa

As everyone can tell by my user name, I like the tree. My family farms for a living and uses this tree as a fence row. We cut up Catalp...Read Morea and Cedar for fencing as they both do not rot quickly. Catalpa trees are very pretty. I do not currently have much to do with the family farm, however I took a small one from there and planted it at my current house. Hurricane Isabel in 03 topped it, so I had to try to shape it up. It was still little then. (about 6 at the base) It grew back very quickly. Now it is about 30 inches at the base. It flowered before it got topped, but did not flower again till about 3 years ago. I now live in an urban development, not a farm. So I am not sure if this makes a difference? In any event, this is a great tree that I would recommend to anyone that wants something that will grow very quickly where you need it to!!!

my toy pug became drowsy after chewing on one of the bean pods from my catalpa tree. It is truly halucinagenic like people have said it is.

My tree is a three year-old volunteer. I have a question: I have a single bee making a home in a hollow tube of a garden table, he/she i...Read Mores biting off bits of the Catapa leaves and taking them into the table. How ODD! Is this common?

Also, a young female squirrel likes to snack on the leaves. So far, an amusing tree!

I agree with many of the previous comments about the upsides of this tree. We had a very tall Catalpa in our Sacramento backyard for many...Read More years. Beautiful flowers and leaves. However, we just had the tree cut down which left a lot of sawdust on the ground. Soon after, we had a good rain storm creating puddles in the yard around where the tree used to be. A day later, literally thousands of earthworms surfaced and died. It is amazing to see so many worms in one place. You couldn't walk anywhere without stepping on one. Sad they are all dead. I've read that the roots are poisonous but apparently the sawdust is also quite bad for worms.

I live in my family home which has been in the family since the 1930s when it was built. There are two large Catalpa trees in the yard w...Read Morehich were planted by my grandfather for shade before air conditioning. Both of which he planted just after the house was built. The trees are quite large at the base but not as tall as you may think. (45-50 feet maybe) I remember collecting the worms as pets when I was a kid. Dad hated the worms because in bad years they would almost defoliate the trees. This did not seem to harm the Catalpas because they always came back in full force the following year. The worms are much better looking than the moths that come later. Some years the worms were plentiful, and other years there were almost none. Catalpas do produce lots of bean pods that fall off mainly in the spring when the new growth appears. I use the bean pods as mulch for my flower beds because they are free and decompose fairly quickly. The bean pods seemed more plentiful when the trees were younger than they do now, and we have not seen any worms for 10 years or so. These trees produce abundant shade, so it may be difficult to grow sun loving plants under the canopy. When I was a kid we had to sleep with the windows closed for about two weeks in June because of my sisters allergy to the flowers. The Catalpas bloomed heavier when they were young, buy are still impressive when in full bloom. When the leaves fall we mulch them up with the lawn mower, we do not bother with raking them because they are very brittle once they dry out. Our trees are old, but still have an awesome shape. Even though our trees are ending their life cycle, if one should die we intend to replace it with another young Catalpa, which pop up every year in our flower beds!

Beautiful tree but MESSY! We live in Chicago and are constantly cleaning up the dried bean pods from our yard, the neighbor's yards, the ...Read Moresidewalk, etc. There is a much older Catalpa tree across the street from us and it produces considerably less bean pods. Maybe these taper off with age? The upside is that the leaves are large and pretty and the flowers are lovely, albeit short-lived.

We have lots of these trees on our place. 2 big ones 50' tall and 3' in diameter, are favorites for their nice shaped curving branches, n...Read Moreice display of flowers in spring, and good shade for the house. the large leaves are beautiful too. many young ones pop up each year all around the yard and we have some in all sizes now. we prune out most of them and keep the lucky ones that started in some good places.

Despite a number of potential negative's for some people, these are spectacular trees. They're plentiful in our area, and free-seed, gro...Read Morewing wherever they can find a place-- all through our gardens, cracks in the concrete, you name it. On the other hand, they grow very quickly and can be transplanted elsewhere, if desired.

The June shower of huge lovely-scented flowers is spectacular! Their large leaves give an immense amount of shade. The trees grow up quickly and with minimal or no care (better when placed very young and active), so if you want quick shade, this is your tree.

The huge foot-long seedpods can be a bit of an annoyance but they seem to just dissipate into the ground and make good mulch after a short time. The large leaves make a bit of a dense ground-mass in autumn but then again they also turn brittle quickly and fall apart on their own, again adding to natural mulching. We never bother cleaning them up.

The wood is rather solid and good for medium to hard wood use. If you don't kill off the trunk and root rather well, it'll shoot right back out again with 8-10 foot branches all over, early the next season. Possibly they could be pruned and tamed to be decent shrubs, I would theorize.

This information was given to me by RainbowRider. I thought it was very interesting and was given permission to add to the plant file....Read Morer />
Catalpa worms are the fish-bait of choice for many anglers here in the south. From scale fish to catfish. The only food supply for the Catalpa worm/caterpillar is the leaves of the Catalpa tree. The leaves get huge, as big as or bigger than a tobacco leaf. The tree itself grows extremely fast and tall. I've planted seedlings that would grow at least 1ft in 1 week. To get the worms on the tree a certain Moth/Butterfly has to lay its eggs on the leaves and they hatch very quickly, as soon as they hatch they immediately start eating the leaves non stop 24 hours a day and reach adult size "4.5" inches in about eight days. Some adults will crawl down the tree and into the soil at the base of the tree where they will hibernate until the next year when they emerge from the ground in the form of a flying insect; moth/butterfly and lays it's eggs and the entire cycle starts again. The caterpillars are beautiful, black with yellowish green stripes horizontally on there body. They cannot sting you but, they have suction appendages on their belly side to help hold them on the leaves and when you handle them they will try to get a grip on you. You just pull them off gently. If your tree does not get visited by this bug you need to find someone with a tree that has the caterpillars on it. Remove some of them and place them on your tree leaves so the cycle will happen on your tree/trees. Ask around fishing tackle/bait shops and ask if anyone knows someone with the caterpillars on their Catalpa tree. If you locate some take a paper bag with you and put some of the worms in the bag along with some leaves, twist the top and punch plenty of small holes in the bag. Do not use plastic! Place the worms/caterpillars on your tree leaves and they will start eating immediately! Their only enemies besides man are wasps! They love to sting them and suck the juice out of them. The cycle is short lived but you can store them in the refrigerator where they will become dormant and wait on you to go fishing. When they get warmed up again they will be actively be searching for the leaves that keep them alive. Their skin is a little tough which is good/they stay on the hook better. When I go to Wal-Mart I usually see some artificial catalpa worms in the tackle section. Yellow with black stripes. 4 freshwater only.

I love this tree. It is not natural to my area, the east coast of Vancouver Island, which is off the west coast of British Columbia, Ca...Read Morenada. I picked up a spindly little tree from a flea market and it has grown very quickly here, we are in a very warm micro-climate for the area. Does anyone know how old the tree has to get before it gets the "pods"? Mine is about 4 years old now and is still only producing flowers. It could be possible it doesn't get enough water in order to produce the pods. I'm not sure if that would make a difference or not. I have not seen a single caterpillar yet! Love to hear from anyone, anywhere.

I notice catalpa trees on old farmer's home steads. Our home was built in 1867 and we have a huge old catalpa that I just love. It must...Read More have been a popular tree about 75 years ago, because alot of them in Saginaw are about that old. I am curious about the caterpillars mentioned here. We have never seen any on our tree. And our seedlings that self sow flower after only 3 years. They grow fast, up to a point, then they seem to slow down. The shape is very distinctive, easy to spot year round because of the beans. I think people mistake catalpa trees for dead in the spring because they are the last to bud here, and they do look dead. Then they bud and flower fully in mid June. Sometimes they will re-flower again a month later, but more sparsely.

Yay! Thank you guys for this website and all your helpful comments!

Our Catalpa tree was huge and healthy when we moved i...Read Morento our house 7 years ago. It's more than 40 feet tall now. We didn't know what it was -- I just found out its name from this site today! -- but my husband refers to it as the "evil tree" because between the seed pods, the blossoms, and the enormous leaves, it is really messy. However, it has the most wonderful shade! We live in Southern California and it gets really hot here in summer. We have several parties at our house in summer and our friends think the tree is great. We have it trimmed into a sort of canopy shape. With its long branches that twist across each other, it's a good tree for climbing.

I've never noticed any caterpillars, I don't think they're native to California. However, ants and spiders seem to like the tree a lot! There is also a flock of wild parrots in our area who really like to sit in the tree and crack the dried pods and eat the seeds. I will upload a photo of them that I took in late December 2006.

I haven't noticed many of these trees in Southern California. There about 12 of them growing at a local high school but they're small, maybe 12 feet tall and the leaves are much smaller. The leaves on our tree are like giant elephant ears 12 inches across or more.

This tree is awsome. My brother planted it 40 yrs ago and its going strong. Its wayyy over our house, so probably 40-50 ft...I am getti...Read Moreng a picture. Everyone that comes to the house says its the most georgeous tree.

I am still reading and someone may have asked but what do we do with the cigar like things that grow? The birds open them up so it must be seeds. I would like to look into saving those and giving or selling these so these trees will live on.

We have two of these trees in the front yard of our rental house (now, two-years residents). Do not know age, but the catalpas are over t...Read Morewenty-five-feet tall. They bloom dramatically every March. The blossoms are overwhelmingly, dreamily, sweetly fragrant for about two weeks. The trees do make a mess of the yard when the huge leaves & pods drop, but a true gardener knows that the organic matter that drops to the ground will always contribute to the health of future plants in the fertile soil!

Can sometimes exhibit iron chlorosis in Alkaline soils when Catalpa speciosa (Northern Catalpa) does not, thus the Northern Catalpa can b...Read Moree used as root stock.

Not a very attractive tree. Large heart shaped leaves turn dead deep gray in fall. Scraggly limbs appear dull black in winter with messy ...Read Morebean seed pods littering the area.
The flowers are the only redeeming factor for this tree. Large clusters of fragrant orchids, each about 2 inches wide.
A great tree for 'Polarding'. Where a 20 foot tree is cut in half and 'suckers' are allowed to grow from just below the cut to form a Lollipop effect. Cut the suckers back to the trunk each spring to keep the shape. This, unfortunately, eliminates any flowering. But looks grand.
Andy P

I can remember as a child in central Louisiana, my stepfather teaching me how to fish. I throughly loved to go fishing with him. We had...Read More a Catalpa tree that we gathered the cats from for fishing. He would put them in the freezer! A few weeks later when we got to go fishing, we would pull the jar out of the freezer and put it in the boat. Before we got to the lake they would be crawling again.... I was amazed!

Messy,12 mos.per yr.,with little fragrance of blossoms. On a small city lot this 40 ft.ér will anger neighbors on all ajoining propertie...Read Mores. A blizzard of beautiful snowy orchids with deep orange centers covers everything near,but for only 1wk.per yr. Leaves larger than a big man's hand fill many bags if not shredded & composted. Heavy pods 16"-18" long have very sharp tips suitable for children's wepons. Wrong tree,wrong location,beware the catalpa.

I've just received a catalpa tree from a "neighbor" where I live in the mid-Willamette Valley of Oregon. She regularly starts seeds from ...Read Moreher two trees which I consider magnificent. One is in her front yard and during a very hot day just calls to you to sit, put your feet up and sip a cool drink. Her trees have 'beans' about 18" long and she says even with the dropping, it is well worth having it for shade and fragrance. I'm looking forward to my own 3' seedling growing and enhancing our country road.

The tree is pretty enough, but has caterpillars on it that fall off and get all over your porch, the yard, the road, your vehicle. Every...Read More time you step out the door, you squash them on the bottom of your shoes, and have squashed caterpillars everywhere you walk. The trees are not worth the trouble caused by the caterpillars.

My boyfriend and I are HUGE fishers. As we were driving to get out bait, he took me...to a tall, beautiful plant with that he called, a "...Read MoreBean Worm Tree". As I looked at the tree, it looked like a typical plant to me, nothing special about it But when he turned the leaves over, there was what looked like to me, a green and black catipillar. He said that the tree "produces" the worms!!! Just like a peach tree produces peaches, he said a bean worm tree produces "bean worms." Now I find it VERY hard to beleive that a plant, or tree, can bloom "a living insect!" So please, someone clear this up for me and him... and tell me how the worms got there.

Editor's Note: The Catalpa tree is known for attracting sphinx moths (also known as "Catalpa Sphinx Moths") and the females lay eggs on the tree; the hatched caterpillars ("worms") are a favorite of fish and fishermen. However, the tree does not actually produce the worms.