yes, that's it. Amazingly, this is a tree I'm quite familiar with - from a distance. They are in flower right now all over East Tennessee. I've just never been close to a budding branch of one. Very invasive pest. Here's what I found on it: Stem. Twigs and branches stout, glossy gray brown and speckled with numerous white dots (lenticels). No terminal bud. Lateral leaf scars raised, circular, and becoming larger, dark, and sunken. Bark light-to-dark gray, roughened, and becoming slightly fissured. Stem pith chambered or hollow and wood white. Leaves. Opposite, heart-shaped and fuzzy hairy on both surfaces, 6 to 12 inches long and 5 to 9 inches wide. Leaves larger on resprouts, 16 to 20 inches across, with extra tips often extending at vein tips. Petioles rough hairy, 2 to 8 inches long. Flowers. April to May. Covered with showy erect panicles of pale-violet flowers before leaves in early spring, tubular with five unequal lobes. Fragrant. Flower buds fuzzy, linear, and becoming ovoid in summer and persistent on erect stalks over winter. Fruit and seeds. June to April. Terminal clusters of pecan-shaped capsules 1 to 2 inches long and 0.6 to 1 inch wide. Pale green in summer turning to tan in winter and eventually black and persistent into spring. Capsules splitting in half during late winter to release tiny winged seeds. Resembles southern catalpa, Catalpa bignonioides Walt., and northern catalpa, C. speciosa (Warder) Warder ex Engelm., which have leaves with sparsely hairy upper surfaces and rough hairy lower surfaces and long slender, persistent beans.

Alexa I had always wondered about that myself. When I went to Costa Rica I sought out Cattleys mainly because they seem the more difficult to germinate. I did find what I believe to be "wild" growing Catts but most were WAY up in the tree tops. took binoculars just to see the leaves.lol. The main problem was other growth there were dozens of other kings of epiphytes .vines and "mosses" surrounding the plant. Could not tell where one plant ended and another began particularly with binoculars lol. With a lot of hunting I was able to locate what I believe were 3 colonies of orchids,posiitive ID almost impossible lol. I saw many that were intentionally planted or were certainly suspect as occuring naturally. My guide showed me a magnificent "colony" of cane Dendrobiums right behind the hotel. he thought they were natives lol. If you think about it .Costa Rica has around 1700 species of natives,so obviously none could be common . BTW found no orchids which I believed to be newly sprouted in any location. But then you could be looking right at them and miss them easily due to other growth. Of 1700 possibilities I saw 3 which I believed to be wild and that took a LOT of effort.lol I learned why orchids were overlooked for so long from the early explorers. gary

We have 34 rose bushes in the yard—the high end ones with big 4-5½ inch blooms, and fragrant. Bees love these flowers, and they also bring the bigger bumble bees. Unfortunately the blooms on each bush only last a few days and do not appear very often, so although bees do love the flowers, I am not sure how well a rose bush keeps them around. There is always at least 1 or 2 blooms somewhere in the yard though. We have a big rose geranium (unrelated to roses) bush that, and although the flowers are very small, there are plenty of tiny little purple flowers on the plant for most of the year. I can see a few bees collecting among the tiny little flowers, but I do not think the plant has much nectar and the bees do not stay very long, so it does not seem to be their preferred flower species. The bees really seem to like the big fragrant hybrid tea roses, where they can get into the stamens in the center of the flower. Some of the floribunda blooms are just too compact and the bees cannot get into the center. The bees also like the orange and lemon blossoms, but the trees only blossom once a year. There will also be many bees buzzing around in the pepper tree when it sends out its tiny blossoms (not really a flower). I cannot imagine the bees really like these blossoms, but it is a huge tree so it attracts many bees—too many in fact. One more thing I have noticed, the bees seem to be very tranquil around the roses, they will rest in each rose for a long time and take their time resting, not really buzzing around from flower to flower so much. It makes me feel more comfortable to be around the bees when they are not flying everywhere.

The plant in my yard that shoots seeds, my sister calls it Artillery weed, has a small rosette of basal leaves and then a flower stalk with tiny white flowers. Oxalis makes a seed pod that looks like a tiny banana, in fact I liked to eat them when I was a kid as they tasted acidic. I'm not aware of them ever shooting seeds at me. Perhaps we're not all talking about the same plant. Oxalis looks like a three-leaved clover. There are photos in the Paghat link in my previous post. I spend a lot of time in early spring trying to get all the "artillery weed" before it starts shooting seeds, I hate it too. But I like Oxalis a lot. If you know the ingredients for the Burn Out II, maybe you could try to mix up something similar. Azure Standard has clove oil. I've heard of using vinegar and a little orange oil cleaner mixed in to kill weeds.