What Is This?

not a clue, there's not a vine or anything producing the flowers is there?

It's some kind of Catalpa as near as I can tell without actually holding the leaf in my hand or examining the tree myself. http://www.missouriplants.com/Whiteopp/Catalpa_speciosa_page.html

How beautiful. A treed version of Virginia blue bells. I'm coming back later to see if it's identified.

You could be right, Quinn. I just went back into Photoshop and did a radical zoom-in on one of the flowers, and the stripes are there as in the photo in your link (ditto the photo in Audubon's). The only thing that's making me hesitate is the general color of the flowers, which the website and the book show as white while these are blue. Maybe a mutation?

Well, I don't believe it is a catalpa - the dried pods are not right, and neither is the flower. If this more tree like or shrub like? How large is it? Have you seen any fruit on it and if so, what did it look like? I don't know what this is which I am going to do everything I can to find out what it is because that's just how I am when it comes to plants. ;-)

Well, see, that's the other reason why I'm hesitant to ID it as a Catalpa - I don't recall seeing the long seed pods of the Catalpa on this in the Fall. But that could just be me being unobservant. On the other hand the leaves are right, the bark on the tree is right, and the flowers growing hanging down from an upright branch is right. So if you can figure this out I'll be eternally grateful. And yes, this is definitely a tree, probably about 20 ft. high, spreading but generally rounded profile.

Could be, could also be that it is a near relation to Catalpa or a different breed or somesuch. I'd ask it, but most Trees don't do the internet.

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U

Stop the press! We have a positive ID! Friends and neighbors, meet Royal Paulownia, also known as the Empress Tree. I happened to pass another two in town, and this time I happened to have the Audubon's tree field guide in my bag, so I whipped it out and turned to the Catalpas. The bark on these trees (you can't really see the trunk on the tree on the Cliff Walk because it's hidden by a stone wall and dense underbrush) just wasn't rough enough to be a Catalpa. Now, the color plate for the Northern Catalpa is #97, and right next door at #98 is the Royal Paulownia, whose leaves look like a Catalpa but who has a smoother bark on the trunk. So I looked up the write-up, and sure enough, this is our mystery tree: bell-shaped violet flowers in upright clusters, and the fruit is an egg-shaped, brown, thick-walled, and pointed on one end. Apparently the tree is native to China and was cultivated here in the late 1900s, when things Chinese came into a huge vogue, including Chinese-style gardens. Since those nut-like fruits are filled with a whole bunch of winged seeds, I can see how it would easily escape the gardens and insert itself into the wild.

So here's our mystery solved!

Congrats on solving the mystery, Sherlock! I was so close, a mere page away from the answer...but I am merely a Watson...close but no violin.

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U wishing you laughter

Excellent - just came back to check on the status of this - glad that it has been solved - it is a nagging thing to not know what something is, and this one just didn't look like anything I knew - and it wasn't!

Oops! There's a goof in my last note. The Royal Paulownia was cultivated in the US in the late *1800s*. My brain wasn't watching what my fingers were doing! And I'm certainly glad everybody's happy that the tree is ID'd. Now I'll have to go and find another mystery.

Hmm, well I've been wondering about that thing in the fridge, but it says that it doesn't want visitors who are only intent on labelling it.


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U wishing you laughter

Hmmm .... I have Catalpa trees in my front yard, messy things they are but beautiful. They look nothing like this tree so glad tohear this was ID'd. Catalpa flowers are clustered and not running up the branch singularly.

Great article of such Roy

Blessings

I don't know what it is, but it's very pretty.