The Not-So-Common Trees - II
Beautiful veins
Pardon me, my dear readers! The
Variegated Bauhinia, also known as Mountain Ebony, should have found its place
in the trees of Caesalpinaceae that appeared as long ago as August 3, 2003. It
slipped my memory.
I found to my surprise a
medium-sized tree growing in Anna Nagar on the 10th Main Road, in the same area
where I live. Now, with the tree in flower in all its glory I could not but
notice it. I told myself that it would be sinful of me not to say a few words
about this tree, even if it is not in its proper context. The tree in flower is
an unforgettable sight. However, it is not so much out of context for it is not
that common in Chennai and so, I think it fits in here in this column - the
not-so-common trees of Chennai.
Botanically known as Bauhinia
variegata, it has two Tamil names: Tiruvathi and Sigappu mandarai. The tree is
also known as the Mountain Ebony in common English.
All Bauhinia are characterised
by the twin-kidney formation of their leaves. The botanical name of Bauhinia
commemorates the memory of Jan and Caspar Bauhin, twins who were pioneers in
botanical studies.
It is a moderate-sized, 20-25
feet tall tree with vertically cracked grey bark. Its wood is moderately hard,
greyish brown with irregular dark patches. The tree by itself is not so
arresting to look at but its flowers are. Not merely the flower as a whole but
every part of it, since in each part there is a noticeable feature.
Even the leaves exhibit a
peculiar kind of venation, though in conformity with the reticulate type, common
to 90 per cent of the dicotyledonous plants. If you take a careful look at the
leaf blade, just where it leaves the stalk, there is a half-moon shaped veinless
area, from which several major veins radiate into each half of the twinned leaf,
in a manner reminding you of a wheel's spokes.
On noticing this peculiar and
arresting beauty of the vein arrangement I travelled down memory lane. Sometime
in the early '60s, Dr B G L Swamy, one of the most famous botanists of India,
held an exhibition in the botany department of Presidency College. In that
exhibition, he focused attention on the intricate, stunningly beautiful patterns
of plants' anatomical details. Some of the textile designers were so struck by
the beauty of what they saw, paid a sizeable money (that went to improve the
facilities in the laboratory) and bought them for use in drawing up new textile
designs. I'm quite sure, venation patterns too exhibit a great array of
patterns: only some student of botany should take it into his head to undertake
the job. Surely, there is some wealth hiding there!
Coming to the flower and its
parts. The large flowers grow in short sprays of two or three, occuring
terminally or in the axils of leaves. The brown calyx (the outermost whorl of a
flower, made up of leaf-like structures) is ribbed and splits and bends around
the long and printed bud that is covered with a down. The second whorl, namely
petals, whose colour it is that we speak of as the colour of the entire flower
are rose-coloured, with slightly whitish veins that emphasise the rose colour,
the main colour.
Each
petal has a narrow claw at the base and a broad limb at the top. The limb is
rounded at its outer end. The stamens, five in number, which constitute the male
elements, have long filaments that emerge out prominently, ending up at their
top with large anthers (pollen boxes). The pistil, the female part of the
flower, is characteristically leguminous: the ovary is flat, long and
one-chambered, the style is eccentrically placed and at its outer end has a
hairy stigma, which catches the floating pollen.
The tree yields a useful gum
and from the seeds an oil is obtained. The dry leaves are used as wrappers for
bidis. An extract of bark, bud and flower helps to stop bleeding.
