Bauhinia championii Seeds | Champion’s Bauhinia
LATIN NAME: Bauhinia championii
COMMON NAME: Champion’s Bauhinia
Plant Profile
Bauhinia leaves look like two leaflets that were persuaded to share a petiole. The blade is cleft almost to the base, giving the shape that earned the genus its camel’s-foot nickname, and only one pulvinus, at the base of the single stalk, moves the whole structure. The genus name honours the brothers Jean and Caspar Bauhin, sixteenth-century Swiss herbalists whose own work joined two traditions into one.
Gardeners know Bauhinia from the flamboyant orchid trees, and this species is not one of them. Bauhinia championii carries small white or greenish-white flowers in slender racemes, produced in quantity rather than in spectacle, and its habit is that of a woody climber rather than a free-standing tree. Look for flat brown pods after flowering, because the legume is the giveaway.
Most legumes are famous for the nitrogen-fixing partnership in their roots, and this one is an exception worth knowing. The Cercidoideae are largely non-nodulating, having lost the bacterial symbiosis that their relatives in Papilionoideae rely on, so a champion’s bauhinia enriches the soil around it by leaf litter rather than by root nodules. That single fact changes how you plant it in a rotation.
The legume family was reorganised in 2017 into six subfamilies on phylogenetic evidence, and Cercidoideae came out near the base of the family tree, close to the Detarioideae. Bauhinia itself was trimmed back at the same time, with Phanera and its allies separated once more, so the species you meet in catalogues may appear under either name depending on when the list was compiled.
Woody lianas are slow from seed, so tissue culture has been developed for several bauhinias using axillary buds and nodal segments, with shoots multiplied on cytokinin-supplemented media and rooted in vitro. The same approach is used for conservation of rare members of the genus, and for named selections that must stay true.
Science & Biotechnology
The stems are the part harvested in folk practice, and they are rich in the polyphenols typical of woody legumes: quercetin and kaempferol glycosides, catechin-type flavanols and condensed tannins that give a cut stem its astringency. Extracts of the stems have been examined for anti-inflammatory and analgesic activity in laboratory work, following the traditional use, though the medicine has a long history and the pharmacology a short one.
Uses & Benefits
The species carries the name of a soldier who spent his leave with a plant press. John George Champion was a British army officer posted to Hong Kong in the 1840s who collected assiduously in the hills of southern China and sent his gatherings to Kew, where Bentham described the climber that now bears his name. Champion’s specimens entered the botanical record in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the plant has stood as his memorial in the literature ever since.
In southern Chinese practice the stems are gathered, cut into short lengths and dried, then simmered in water for a bitter decoction, sometimes used as a wash as well as a drink. The material is harvested from wild climbers rather than from planted stock, and the trade is small and local; treat any use as a traditional practice rather than a measured prescription.
Growing from Seed
Give the plant a stout frame, an arch or a tree trunk and it will thread itself upward without any tying beyond the first season. It flowers best on the previous season’s wood, so prune lightly after flowering and never cut hard into old stems if you want the white racemes the following summer. A sheltered, sunlit wall suits it, and a light mulch over the root run keeps the ground cool.
Legume seed arrives armoured. Nick the coat with a file or a sharp knife, or pour hot water over the seed and let it stand until it swells, then sow in a free-draining mix of loam, compost and grit at twice the seed’s own depth. Keep the flat warm and barely damp; a wet flat rots hard-coated seed faster than a dry one. Transplant when the seedlings have formed a firm pair of true leaves.
Bauhinia seedlings resent root disturbance, so pot them on while the root still has room and keep the pot off a cold floor. Water by weight rather than on a schedule, and give the young climber a stake from its first full season so the stem is straight where it matters. Feed lightly with a diluted liquid dressing through the growing season.
Indoors and against a wall the plant attracts scale and mealybug in the leaf axils, which show as sticky honeydew and black sooty mould on the leaves below. Wipe the canes with a soapy cloth and repeat. In a humid spell powdery mildew dusts the foliage; open the canopy by thinning the twining stems and water at the root rather than over the leaves.
Our Take
I grow bauhinias for the leaf as much as the flower, and this white-flowered climber is the quietest one of the lot. For coloured flowers on a small tree, see Bauhinia variegata and Bauhinia blakeana; for a shrubby species that takes drier ground, Bauhinia racemosa is a sound choice, and flamboyant tree will give you the same butterfly-leaf family look in a hotter garden.
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