Orchid trees

Our trip had been planned badly, so we spent really long hours on the road. There was little time for long walks, and in any case the pervasive smoke from forest fires made it impossible most of the time. As a result, the opportunity for bird watching was limited, and I decided to concentrate on something I’ve long put on the backburner: identifying trees. On the day-long drive from Almora to Munsiyari, I spotted a tree full of white flowers by the road, and stopped. A closer look told me that this was Bauhinia variegata.

The characteristic shape of the leaves of the genus Bauhinia has been called “camels’ hoofprints” by Pradip Krishen in his field guide Trees of Delhi. Less poetically, when you flatten out a leaf, it seems to have two lobes. The five-petalled flower has colours which can range from purple to white, hence the specific name variegata. You can find this tree across India up to an altitude of about 1500 m. As a result it has many names in different Indian languages. I think I’ll stick to the Kumaoni name, Kachnar for now, instead of the fancy English constructs like mountain ebony or orchid tree. After all, Corbett just calls it Bauhinia. In Kumaon I saw the flowers used in food, and read later that the flower as well as leaves are eaten in various parts of India. Apparently its uses in medicine have been documented for a long time. The full geographical range includes Pakistan, India, Myanmar, and southern China. It would be interesting to check whether it is used for cooking in Cantonese food, or, more accurately, in the kitchens of Guangdong.

In most of the flowers that I saw, three of the five petals stand close to each other, sometimes overlapping, and two are quite separate. As a result, from many angles a photo shows all five petals, and all five long stamens. One petal is always multicoloured, making it a very interesting subject for photography. As I read more about this genus, I saw that it contains species across the world’s tropics. Is this then a very ancient genus? Apparently not. Fossil and molecular evidence agree in placing its origins in Eastern Asia only around 60 million years ago, just about the time that India banged into Asia. So its dispersal across the world is not due to continental movement. Amazing that seeds and seedpods can travel such long distances!