Bauhinia purpurea
The size of the plant and of its bag can vary a little from the photograph — each one grows at its own pace. We keep them as consistent as we can.
Overview
Its purple flowers look like orchids, and its leaves, split into two lobes like a deer's hoofprint, give it its Costa Rican name: casco de venado, "deer's hoof" (elsewhere it's pata de vaca, "cow's foot"). It's a fast, hardy pioneer tree that opens the way in new systems. And it's edible: in India its flower buds are pickled and cooked in curries.
Culture
- Habit
- Evergreen Tree
- Height
- 8.00 m
- Growth Rate
- Fast
- Pollinators
- Bees
- Cultivation Status
- Cultivated, Ornamental, Wild
Full sun and almost any well-drained soil; it flowers best on drier soils. It grows fast and establishes easily. Plant at 3–4 m. It can naturalize beyond cultivation, so collect the pods if you don't want it to spread.
Edible Uses
The leaves, flower buds, flowers and young pods are eaten cooked as a vegetable. The buds are pickled or added to stews and curries.
Medicinal
Traditionally, the root is used for wind and the flowers as a mild laxative. A poultice of bark, root and flowers with rice water is applied to abscesses.
Traditional uses for information only. Not a substitute for advice from a health professional.
Agroforestry
A pioneer support species of the medium stratum: it grows fast, gives early shade and responds well to pruning, which becomes biomass for the soil. Its flowers draw bees. Ideal for the early stages of a system, while the long-lived species establish.