3528.000 Bauhinia L. - Orchid trees

Shrubs or small trees, sometimes scrambling or climbing. Tendrils 0, but branches sometimes coiling in a tendril-like manner. Leaves alternate, simple, conspicuously 2-lobed. Flowers usually large and showy, bisexual, in short racemes or solitary. Calyx spathaceous. Petals 5, free. Fertile stamens 1-10, sometimes accompanied by staminodes. Stigma capitate or small. Pods oblong-linear, woody, dehiscent. Seeds flat.

Derivation of name: Named, because of the 2-lobed leaves, after two Swiss botanists, Jean and Caspar Bauhin.

Comment: Apparently all species of Bauhinia known in Rwanda, even those native elswhere in Africa, have been introduced as ornamental shrubs and trees. It is unclear whether some may have become naturalized.

Worldwide: 300 species, pantropical.

Rwanda: 5 cultivated taxa.