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Catalpa
Catalpas are mostly fast-growing deciduous trees with large heart-shaped leaves and showy summer flowers, grown as ornamental and shade trees. Give them full sun and room to spread, as they grow large.
Catalpa (, ), also commonly called catawba, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae, native to warm temperate and subtropical regions of North America, the Caribbean, and East Asia.
The tree is the sole source of food for the catalpa sphinx moth (Ceratomia catalpae), the leaves being eaten by the caterpillars. When caterpillars are numerous, infested trees may be completely defoliated. Defoliated catalpas produce new leaves readily, but with multiple generations occurring, new foliage may be consumed by subsequent broods. Severe defoliation over several consecutive years can cause death of trees. Because the caterpillars are an excellent live bait for fishing, some dedicated anglers plant catalpa mini-orchards for their own private source of "catawba-worms", particularly in the Southern United States.
Southern catalpa · Manchurian Catalpa · Hybrid Catalpa · Chinese catalpa · Northern catalpa
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Catalpa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
