Bauhinia

Bauhinia is a genus of trees or shrubs in the Fabaceae family. Only few of them scramble or climb, while some may be deciduous, others evergreen. They do not grow tendrils, but some have stem-tips that curl tendril-like.

The alternate leaves are simple, entire or conspicuously two-lobed, sometimes divided to the base, the twin leaf parts often characteristic. Several veins may grow from the leaf base. The stipules drop off early.

The flowers grow solitary, in short racemes, simple sprays or branched heads. The large and often showy flowers are irregular (laterally symmetrical) and bisexual, the floral parts mostly in fives. The five-lobed or -toothed calyx is spathe-like or bell-shaped, split down one side. The lobes overlap in bud. There are usually five petals, rarely six. The petals are nearly equal, sometimes long-clawed.

The ten stamens with variable filaments grow in two whorls of five. They are united or free and spreading, some of them sometimes only staminodes. The ovary is stalked, containing two or many ovules. The stigma is small or dilated.

The sometimes stalked, dehiscent fruit pod is woody or membranous. Its shape is oblong, linear or ovate, straight or sickle-shaped. The seeds are compressed.

There are about 192 Bauhinia species, mainly in tropical areas of Africa, Asia and the Americas, six of them indigenous in southern Africa. Several exotic species are also cultivated in South Africa, and many species are planted worldwide in warmer regions.

The plant in picture is probably Bauhinia variegata, an exotic from southeast Asia, found in northern parts of South Africa today, mainly as a garden ornamental. There isn’t an indigenous pink-flowering Bauhinia in South Africa. B. urbaniana found in the north of Namibia and further north in Africa, sometimes bears pink flowers but with crisped petal margins (Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Mannheimer and Curtis (Eds.), 2009; Coates Palgrave, 2002; Wikipedia).