Description:

• Trees or shrubs, seldom scandent or climbing
• Tendrils 0 but branches sometimes curling apically and tendril-like
• Leaves alternate, sometimes simple, entire or conspicuously 2-lobed or sometimes divided to base; stipules caducous
• Inflorescence a short, usually few-flowered raceme or flowers solitary
• Flowers bisexual, irregular, often large and showy
• Calyx spathaceous, with limb split down one side, 5-toothed or -lobed; lobes imbricate in bud
• Petals 5 (rarely 6), subequal, sometimes, long-clawed
• Stamens 10, free or connate, sometimes some reduced to staminodes; filaments variable
• Ovary stalked, with stalk free or adnate to calyx tube, 2-many-ovuled; stigma terminal, small or variously dilated
• Pod sometimes stalked, woody to membranous, oblong, linear, or ovate, straight to falcate, dehiscent
• Seeds compressed
• x = 7 (9, 11, 12, 13) (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Bauhinia L.
  • Linnaeus: 374 (1753)
  • Harvey: 275 (1862)
  • Brenan: 207 (1967)
  • Coetzer & Ross: 47 (1977)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species numbers uncertain, cosmopolitan
• Southern Africa: Species 6, Namibia, the four northern provinces, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape; several more cultivated