Bauhinia variegata (mountain ebony)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Bauhinia variegata, photographed by Abhinav Thakur — fig. a Abhinav Thakur, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-10 / obs. 187244151

Bauhinia variegata, photographed by Dinesh Valke — fig. b Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 184471570

Bauhinia variegata, photographed by Swarochi Tathagath — fig. c Swarochi Tathagath, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175154087

Bauhinia variegata, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis — fig. d Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 123482826

Bauhinia variegata, photographed by Ramnarayan K — fig. e Ramnarayan K, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 117480451

Bauhinia variegata, photographed by portioid — fig. f portioid, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112753632

Bauhinia variegata, photographed by Jonathan Whitaker — fig. g Jonathan Whitaker, CC0 1.0 / obs. 97254731

Bauhinia variegata, photographed by geralg — fig. h geralg, CC0 1.0 / obs. 50625024

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 13 botanical countries

Native distribution of Bauhinia variegata, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Assam	ASS	ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh	BAN
East Himalaya	EHM
India	IND
Laos	LAO
Myanmar	MYA
Nepal	NEP
Pakistan	PAK
Thailand	THA
Vietnam	VIE
West Himalaya	WHM
China South-Central	CHC	ASIA-TEMPERATE
Panamá	PAN	SOUTHERN AMERICA

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 207 in flower of 222 examined

92%

96%

98%

94%

92%

100%

92%

91%

90%

67%

92%

91%

Proportion of examined Bauhinia variegata in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	11	12	92%	65% to 99%
Feb	26	27	96%	82% to 99%
Mar	48	49	98%	89% to 100%
Apr	30	32	94%	80% to 98%
May	11	12	92%	65% to 99%
Jun	6	6	100%	61% to 100%
Jul	12	13	92%	67% to 99%
Aug	20	22	91%	72% to 97%
Sep	18	20	90%	70% to 97%
Oct	4	6	67%	30% to 90%
Nov	11	12	92%	65% to 99%
Dec	10	11	91%	62% to 98%

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Bauhinia variegata 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. 207 of 222 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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 15 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 alba Buch.-Ham. ex Wall.
Bauhinia cancara Buch.-Ham. ex Steud.
Bauhinia candida Roxb.
Bauhinia candida Aiton
Bauhinia chinensis Vogel
Bauhinia cucullata Desv.
Bauhinia variegata var. alboflava de Wit
Bauhinia variegata var. candida (Aiton) Buch.-Ham.
Bauhinia variegata var. candida (Roxb.) Corner
Bauhinia variegata var. chinensis DC.
Bauhinia variegata var. purpurascens Voigt
Perlebia variegata (L.) A.Schmitz
Perlebia variegata var. alboflava (de Wit) A.Schmitz
Phanera variegata (L.) Benth.
Phanera variegata var. candida (Aiton) X.Y.Zhu

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.