Bauhinia racemosa Seeds | Bidi Leaf Tree
LATIN NAME: Bauhinia racemosa
COMMON NAME: Bidi Leaf Tree
Plant Profile
Bauhinia racemosa is a small, crooked tree of the dry forests of India, and it is grown for its leaves rather than for its timber or its flowers. The leaf is distinctive: two rounded lobes joined at the base, with a notch at the tip, so that it looks like a hoof or a pair of hands. The tree reaches eight metres, often with a short, forked trunk and a spreading crown.
The species is one of the main sources of bidi leaf, the wrapper of the small hand-rolled cigarette smoked across South Asia. The leaves are picked, dried and sold in bundles, and the trade supports millions of households in India and in Bangladesh, mostly as a cottage industry. The flowers are small, white and in racemes, and they appear in spring before the leaves.
Science & Biotechnology
The leaf is used as a wrapper because it is thin, pliable, slow-burning and almost tasteless when dry, and because it holds a roll without glue. Tendu leaf, from Diospyros melanoxylon, is the premium wrapper, and Bauhinia racemosa is one of the substitutes used where tendu is scarce or expensive, along with Bauhinia vahlii and several other species.
The tree is a legume, and it fixes nitrogen. Its leaves are browsed by goats, and the bark is used for tanning and for rope. In common with other Bauhinia species, the leaf is folded at night, and the two lobes close along the midrib, a movement driven by the pulvinus at the base of the blade.
Uses & Benefits
The leaf is the commercial product, collected in spring and early summer and dried in the shade. The tree is also lopped for fodder, and the bark is used for cordage and for tanning. The wood is hard and dark and is used for agricultural implements and for fuel.
In Ayurveda the bark and the leaf are used for diarrhoea and for skin complaints, and the seed is used as a tonic. The tree is planted as an ornamental and as a shade tree, and it is used in agroforestry on dry land, where its nitrogen and its leaf litter improve the soil.
Growing from Seed
Scarify the seed with hot water and sow it in spring at 25 to 30 degrees. Germination is in two to three weeks, and the seedling is fast enough to plant out in its first year. Cuttings are possible but slow.
The tree wants full sun and a well-drained soil, and it tolerates drought, heat and poor ground. It is tender below about minus two. It is short-lived and often crooked, so plant it for leaf and for shade rather than for timber, and prune it when young if a single trunk is wanted. It coppices well and can be cut for fuel on a short rotation.
Our Take
A modest tree with one large industry behind it: the leaf that wraps a bidi, picked by hand across the Indian subcontinent.
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