PlantFiles: Bauhinia
Bauhinia rufescens

A very elegant small tree, noteworthy for it's delicate blue-green foliage and refined habit. To date, after two and a half years in the garden, the small white flowers have been only sparsely produced. Survived our Central Florida '09 freeze with only minor dieback and recovered admirably in the spring. A beautiful, under-used small tree for the subtropical landscape.

This is a beautiful little tree/shrub. Where I live, it stays green all year round and has small leaves like lima beans and little white flowers (like confederate jasmine). It looks like an easy to manage tree as well, with no falling leaves or excessive growth. the only negative is that the brown pods look weird but they can be removed.

I successfully got 4 out of 10 seeds to germinate (after 3 attempts - exactly 40%). I had the dried pods for about two months before removing seeds. I boiled water and added seeds for exactly 3 minutes. I soaked them in new water exactly 24 hours. Then I scored a few of them with an exacto knife/blade and even cut a little piece off of the hard/rubbery shell off of a couple. I planted half in a mix of about 1/3 perlite and 2/3 potting soil in little plastic cups with drainage holes. Planted with narrow side / u-flap facing up and just touching the surface. I was equally successful germinating (2 out of 5) in a glass with water with seeds sitting in folds of damp paper towels around the inside of glass. Many get moldy looking but can still sprout. all of this was done inside near a bright window and soil / glass keept always moist. Took about 4 days to germinate. after a week, i moved it into the sunlight /rain outside (direct sun, about 4 hrs. per day)

Natural Habitat
B. rufescens is deciduous in drier areas and is an evergreen in wetter areas. It is often found in dry savannah, especially near stream banks. It is found in the entire Sahel and adjacent Sudan zone, from Senegal and Mauritania across North Ghana and Niger to central Sudan and Ethiopia.
Geographic distribution
Native : Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda
Biophysical limits
Altitude: 200-800 m, Mean annual temperature: Over 40 deg. C, Mean annual rainfall: 400-1000 mm Soil type: B. rufescens is found on poor, arid, sandy, stony soils, as well as on deep clays.
Propagation methods
The species is scarcely propagated and grows mainly in the wild. Seeds require pretreatment before planting in the nursery. The recommended treatment involves boiling seeds for several minutes and allowing them to cool. This gives a germination percentage of about 40%. The length of time required in the nursery is 4-6 months. Good rooting has been observed on cuttings, with 85% producing roots in 2 weeks. The cuttings rooted better in a sand or a sand-gravel mixture, and upper nodes rooted better than basal nodes.

This information is from AgroForestryTree Database