ruffled white trumpet

ruffled white trumpet

blossoms beckon bees by day,

entice moths by night

In spring, the big round buds of the catawba burst open to reveal wadded white blossoms inside. Magically, they unfold like tissue paper origami into ruffled orchidlike blooms. By early summer, dozens of blossoms hang from each pendulous panicle. Then the catawba gets down to the business of procreation. Working round the clock, the flowers turn on double charms to attract pollinators. By day, bees are drawn by sight to the golden yellow strips and dotted magenta lines on the "landing pad" of the flower leading to the nectar in the center. Bees prefer the colors red and yellow, but they have little sense of smell. So why does the catawba exude such an intoxicating fragrance? By night, moths flock to the intensely sweet scent and thus continue the pollination process. When the flowers finally fall, they carpet the grass so thickly it looks like snow in summer. Not all of the profusion of blossoms get pollinated, but the ones that do produce extravagantly long slender green seedpods that dangle down between the huge heart-shaped leaves.

heart-shaped green leaves sprout

heart-shaped green leaves sprout

from the lightning-blasted trunk

of the old catawba

This tall catawba bears a sinuous scar where lightning log ago seared the trunk from bottom to top. The hollowed base opens like a buttressed knave in a cathedral, harboring a mystical font surrounded by a host of heart-shaped leaves from suckers sprouting out of the damaged base. The leaves of the catawba are large, up to a foot long, providing copious shade and shelter, which makes the tree popular with birds. The catawba tree derives its name from the Catawba tribe who lived on the banks of the Catawba River, a tributary of the Wateree River in the Carolinas. The Catawba were known in their own language as the Kawahcatawbas, "the people of the river." Due to a transcription error by the botanist who first described the tree, it is also called catalpa. Another folk name for the catawba is fish bait tree, because it attracts  green and yellow caterpillars, the larva of the catalpa sphinx moth, which make excellent live bait. The caterpillars are so voracious that they can defoliate an entire tree, but it will usually recover and send up new sprouts. The catawba grows rapidly, as much as two feet a year when young, and survives in most conditions, from caterpillar infestation, poor soil, polluted cities and windswept prairies, where pioneers took the hardy trees to plant on their new homesteads. This huge specimen could be 150 years old. It stands not far from Henn Mansion, built in 1857 by Bernhardt Henn, a pioneer banker in Fairfield, Iowa, after it was founded in 1836.