Bauhinia

Malabar bauhinia Bauhinia malabarica, copyright Dinesh Valke.

Belongs within: Fabales.

Bauhinia, orchid trees, is a pantropical genus of trees, shrubs and lianas producing brightly coloured flowers with subsessile to prominently clawed petals. Some species are widely cultivated as ornamentals and the hybrid species B. blakeana appears on the flag of Hong Kong.

Characters (from Flora of China): Trees, shrubs, or lianas, hermaphroditic, monoecious, andromonoecious, or androdioecious. Leaves simple, bilobed or entire, rarely 2-foliolate with a shared upper pulvinus; primary veins 3-15, midvein ending with a free, small point; stipules caducous. Inflo­rescences solitary flowers, or many flowers in racemes, panicles, or corymbs; bracts and bracteoles usually small and caducous. Hypanthium cupular, campanulate, or tubular. Calyx closed or open with 5 short or linear teeth at apex in bud, at anthesis spatha­ceous, or regularly or irregularly split into 2-5 lobes. Petals 5, subequal to strongly differentiated, subsessile or prominently clawed, white, yellowish orange, pink, or purplish red. Stamens 2, 3, 5, or 10; anthers dorsifixed, longitudinally dehiscent. Staminodes pres­ent or not. Ovary 1- to many ovuled, sessile or with stalk; stigma small or prominent, variously shaped. Fruit flat, elliptic, oblong, obovoid, or linear, woody or thinly valved, dehiscent or indehiscent. Seeds few to many; endosperm present or not.

<==Bauhinia B02b
    `--B. subg. Piliostigma sect. Piliostigma B02b
         |--B. foveolata B02b
         |--B. malabarica B02b
         `--‘Piliostigma’ reticulatum GC05

Bauhinia incertae sedis:
  B. bidentata P88
  B. blakeana P88
  B. carronii C16
  B. cunninghamii LK14
  B. hawkesiana C16
  B. hookeri C16
  B. kockiana K03
  B. monandra B14
  B. ovatifolia B02a
  B. pauletia K06
  B. pseudocotyledon B56
  B. purpurea B02b
  B. racemosa B02b
  B. rufa K06
  B. semibifida K03
  B. tomentosa B14
  B. ungulata K06
  B. vahlii P03
  B. variegata B02b
  B. wallichii B02a
  B. wyomingana Brown 1956 B56

*Type species of generic name indicated

REFERENCES

[B02a] Bandyopadhyay, S. 2002a. Notes on the distribution of Bauhinia wallichii Macbr. and B. ovatifolia T. Chen, Leguminosae: Caesalpinioideae. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 99 (3): 547–548.

[B02b] Bandyopadhyay, S. 2002b. Seedling morphology of Bauhinia foveolata Dalz., Leguminosae: Caesalpinioideae. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 99 (3): 551–553.

[B14] Bouchard, P. (ed.) 2014. The Book of Beetles: A lifesize guide to six hundred of nature's gems. Ivy Press: Lewes (United Kingdom).

[B56] Brown, R. W. 1956. New items in Cretaceous and Tertiary floras of the western United States. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 46 (4): 104–108.

[C16] Cambage, R. H. 1916. Notes on the native flora of tropical Queensland. Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 49 (3): 389–447, pls 57–61.

[GC05] Granjon, L., J.-F. Cosson, E. Quesseveur & B. Sicard. 2005. Population dynamics of the multimammate rat Mastomys huberti in an annually flooded agricultural region of central Mali. Journal of Mammalogy 86 (5): 997–1008.

[K03] Kulip, J. 2003. An ethnobotanical survey of medicinal and other useful plants of Muruts in Sabah, Malaysia. Telopea 10 (1): 81–98.

[K06] Kwiecinski, G. G. 2006. Phyllostomus discolor. Mammalian Species 801: 1–11.

[LK14] Lyons, M. N., G. J. Keighery, L. A. Gibson & T. Handasyde. 2014. Flora and vegetation communities of selected islands off the Kimberley coast of Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement 81: 205–244.

[P03] Paul, T. K. 2003. Botanical observations on the Purulia pumped storage hydropower project area, Bagmundi Hills, Purulia district, West Bengal. Bulletin of the Botanical Survey of India 45: 121–142.

[P88] Polunin, I. 1988. Plants and Flowers of Malaysia. Times Editions: Singapore.

Last updated: 30 March 2021.