Highlights of my last visit, including Catalpa ID discussion

1.Catalpa bungei. Last year Catalpa bungei didn't have flowers at all, so this year after good rest it makes up. Lots of flowers from top to bottom!


2.Tilia chinensis. I know, most people would not pay attention to these flowers, but I was surprised with these waxy-looking flowers, they look so different from those we usually see on local linden trees.


3. All flowers in Alpine garden are just gorgeous as always, my favourites are
Digitalis obscura from Spain, great unusual colors

Wachendorfia paniculata from S.Africa(yellow one), rare plant

Escallonia rubra cv. Woodside, very unusual Escallonia

 

Re: Highlights of my last visit

1. Catalpa fargesii

 

Re: Highlights of my last visit

Here is the label

 

Re: Highlights of my last visit

Yes, naturally you were going by a label.

Here is a current key, since the clusters aren't very big maybe it does come out to be C. bungei - even though the flowers aren't red. Should be possible to tell by the leaf shapes and markings of the flowers etc. - I haven't tried. There used to be one in the garden that looked like your picture, was labeled C. fargesii.

http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=105851

In western horticulture C. bungei has a history of being a synonym of C. bignonioides 'Nana', even though there is an actual C. bungei that is a separate wild species different from C. bignonioides 'Nana'.

 

Re: Highlights of my last visit

Ok, we are planning to go to the garden tomorrow and we would closely check sizes and shapes of everything
I am not arguing with you, I believe anybody who studied plants and are professionals

 

Re: Highlights of my last visit

great share....love the pictures!

 

Re: Highlights of my last visit

Here's more on the Catalpa. I think the inflorescence is corymbose, pale purple,


which does put us into the part of the key from Ron's link for C. bungei vs C. fargesii:

It's not clear to me at all which leaf shape this is. The first photo seems to show cordate leaves; the second one ovate leaves. The largest leaves are around 18cm long.


We didn't understand what simple lateral branching is, or even whether this photo demonstrates it.


Last year's pods are around a half meter long. We roughly measured one at 65cm.


There seemed to be around 8 or 9 flowers in an inflorescence, though there were a lot of flowers on the ground, and I'm not confident that that number is correct.

 

In their recent article (Manchurian catalpa Catalpa bungei, in Arnoldia 68(2):75-76.), Rirchard T. Olsen and John H. Kirkbride Jr. (both of the US National Arboretum) seem to suggest that Catalpa fargesii is minor variant of C. bungei.

The tree in question in the Asian Garden is a grafted plant from Hillier Nursery, received in 1986 and originally labeled C. fargesii subsp. duclouxii. There is a herbarium specimen of C. bungei with amazingly long capsules at the end of the aforementioned article. I was struck how much they look like those of our specimen.

The utility of keeping older names is constantly being challenged by the shifting landscape of phylogenetic reassessment and unrelenting drive toward scientific accuracy. We don't always get it right, or get around to getting it right in a timely fashion, but we try.

 

That would surely be the same specimen I saw there in the past, with the earlier labeling. After reading the eFloras accounts I am not surprised that there is now some thinking that the two species are really one; I suspect the UBC specimen may not fit exactly either species as described by eFloras, it perhaps instead having a combination of characteristics.

 

This tree has a few new pods this year. For another Catalpa species, I read that "abundant pods are produced every 2 to 3 years", so maybe that's what's happening here, and next year we'll have the next good crop.