(01-03-2016, 01:59 AM)Diane wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.With regard to this folio, I was less confident than with most of them, but settled with some hesitation for the leaf (which sets the type) as being from Bauhinia malabarica; with the flower from Bauhinia tomentosa . The latter would have been of importance where it grew, in southern India, because it is also known as the 'flower of St. Thomas' and would thus have been revered, and I expect used for ...
That's an interesting idea, especially regarding the thickened calyx, but Bauhinia tomentosa grows as a shrub; it resembles a small apple tree in shape and size. Plants like that rarely have rhizomes with leaf scars because the leaves grow above the stalk/trunk rather than out of the rhizome.
The VMS rhizome is very carefully and specifically drawn. That kind of rhizome is most often seen in aquatic and wetland/marshy plants because they shed their leaves as they creep along their environment. That's why they have leaf scars. Shrubby plants have leaf scars on the branches, not on the rhizome.
B. tomentosa doesn't have a kidney-shaped leaf. It has a reverse-kidney-shaped leaf.