Barry helped me with the identification. This is really not a Bauhinia at all, but a relative, which seems to have small white flowers, not the orchid-like, colourful ones that most Bauhinias have. This was a slight disappointment; I don't have an orchid tree.
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I never saw this beautiful individual of Bauhinia in bloom, so I don't know which colour the flowers are. This is a very common tree in our area, we have tens of them growing wild on our plot.
I asked one "neighbour" 3 kms away who also has many of them. He said the flowers are not particularly beautiful, something yellowish-brown, he said. Probably in the wild in Gambia there is only one species of the tree, so it might be the same as I have.
Piliostigma thonningii?
ReplyDeleteIt looks like Piliostigma reticulatum. In Mandinka they call it Fara. They use for fibrous bark for Karankarang, and has many medicinal uses
ReplyDeleteThey use the fibrous bark*
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