Bauhinia forficataLink

Orchid Treecow's-foot

WFO wfo-0000173906 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Bauhinia forficata, photographed by Diego Carús
fig. a Diego Carús, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-19 / obs. 199761550

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 9 botanical countries

Regions where Bauhinia forficata is native: Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Bolivia, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Paraguay, Uruguay Argentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestBoliviaBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralParaguayUruguay
Native distribution of Bauhinia forficata, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Bolivia BOL
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Paraguay PAR
Uruguay URU

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 106 in flower of 163 examined

Proportion of examined Bauhinia forficata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 44 47 94% 83% to 98%
Feb 31 33 94% 80% to 98%
Mar 8 9 89% 56% to 98%
Apr 4 22 18% 7% to 39%
May 5 12 42% 19% to 68%
Jun 0 4 too few examined
Jul 0 2 too few examined
Aug 0 2 too few examined
Sep 1 8 13% 2% to 47%
Oct 0 2 too few examined
Nov 1 8 13% 2% to 47%
Dec 12 14 86% 60% to 96%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Bauhinia forficata observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 106 of 163 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 24 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Bauhinia aculeata Vell.
  • Bauhinia armata Thunb.
  • Bauhinia brasiliensis Vogel
  • Bauhinia brasiliensis var. longiflora Wawra
  • Bauhinia breviloba Benth.
  • Bauhinia candicans Benth.
  • Bauhinia divaricata Steud.
  • Bauhinia forficata subsp. candicans (Benth.) E.Latzina
  • Bauhinia forficata var. candicans (Benth.) Hassl. ex Latzina
  • Bauhinia forficata var. grandifolia Benth.
  • Bauhinia forficata var. latifolia Benth.
  • Bauhinia forficata var. longiflora (Bong.) Benth.
  • Bauhinia forficata var. pruinosa (Vogel) Hassl.
  • Bauhinia longiflora (Bong.) Steud.
  • Bauhinia longiflora D.Dietr.
  • Bauhinia pruinosa Vogel
  • Inga forficata (Link) Hoffmanns.
  • Pauletia breviloba (Benth.) A.Schmitz
  • Pauletia candicans (Benth.) A.Schmitz
  • Pauletia forficata (Link) A.Schmitz
  • Pauletia forficata var. latifolia (Benth.) A.Schmitz
  • Pauletia forficata var. longiflora (D.Dietr.) A.Schmitz
  • Pauletia longiflora Bong.
  • Pauletia pruinosa (Vogel) A.Schmitz

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.