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Canberra, Aust Capital Terr, Australia
Scientific Name
Bauhinia variegata L.
Synonyms
Bauhinia candida Ait., Bauhinia chinensis (DC.) Vogel, Bauhinia decora Uribe, Bauhinia variegata var. alboflava de Wit, Bauhinia variegata L. var. candida (Aiton) Corner, Bauhinia variegata L. var. chinensis DC., Phanera variegata (L.) Benth.
Family
Fabaceae, also placed in Caesalpiniaceae
Common /English Names
Bauhinia, Butterfly Ash, Butterfly Tree, Camel’s Foot, Camel’s Foot Tree, Mountain Ebony, Orchid Tree, Pink Orchid Tree, Poor Man’s Orchid, Purple Orchid Tree, Variegated Orchid Tree, White Bauhinia, White Bauhinia Orchid Tree, White Camel’s Foot, White Variegated Orchid Tree
Vernacular Names
Afrikaans: Orgideëboom
Brazil: Mororó, Pata-De-Vaca, Unha-De-Vaca (Portuguese)
Burmese: Bwècheng
Chinese: Zi Jing, Yang Ti Jia, Yang Zi Jing
French: Arbre A Orchidées, Arbre De Saint-Thomas, Bois De Boeuf, Sabot Boeuf German: Bunte Bauhinie, Buntfarbene Bauhinie
India: Kotora, Kurol (Assamese), Raktakanchan (Bengali), Darichiksam, Migong (Garo), Barial, Dhak, Goriyal, Gurial, Gwiar, Kachnar, Kancanar, Kandan, Kaniar, Karal, Karial, Khwairaal, Khairwal, Khwairai, Koliar, Kural, Papri, Padrian, Plah (Hindi), Arishina Thaega, Arisinantige, Arjuna, Arsantega, Ayata, Ayisha, Bilikanchavala, Bilikanchivala, Bilikancivala, Bilikanjivala, Irkubalitu, Irkumbalithu, Irkumbalitu, Jhinjero, Kaanchanaara, Kanchivala, Kanchivalado, Kanchiyalapada, Kanchvaala, Kancivala, Kanjivala, Karalabhogi, Karalbogi, Kempu Mandara, Kempukanjivala, Mandara, Mandaara, Kempu Kanchivaala, Kempukancivala, Kempukancivalada, Kempumandar, Kempumandara, Kondalka, Kogilepukka, Kondaalka, Kovindaara, Pulikogelapukka, Seyadla, Ulipa,Ulipe, Ulpe,Utipa (Kannada), Dieng Long, Dieng Tharlong (Khasi), Chommandara, Chovanna-Mandaru, Chovannamandaree, Chovannamandaru, Chuvanna-Mandaram, Chuvannamandaram, Chuvannamandari, Chuvannamundiri, Cuvannamandaram, Konnu, Konnumandaram, Kovidaram, Malayakatti, Mandaram, Suvannamandaram, Unna, Unnu (Malayalam), Chingthao-Angouba (Manipuri), Kanaraj, Kanchan, Kavidara, Rakta-Kanchan, Raktakanchan, Rakthakanchan Thaur (Marathi), Vau-Favang, Vaube, Vaufawang (Mizoram), Vau-Favang, Vaube, Kachan (Oriya), Ashmantaka, Asphota, Camarika, Chamari, Chamarika, Champavidala, Gandari, Girija, Kacanara, Kanakaprabha, Kancanara, Kancanarah, Kancanaraka, Kanchana, Kanchanala, Kanchanar, Kanchanara, Kanchanarah, Kanchanaraka, Kantar, Karaka, Karbudara, Kovidar, Kovidara, Kovidarah, Kuddala, Kuddalah, Kuddara, Kuli, Kundali, Mahapushpa, Murva, Pakari, Raktakanchana, Raktapushpa, Shonapushpaka, Suvarnara, Svalpakesari, Tamrapushpa, Uddalaka, Yamalachhada, Yamalapatrakah, Yugapatraka, Yugmapatra, Yugmapatrah (Sanskrit), Akatuti, Aranpucaikkerramaram, Aranpucaimaram, Calacacankati, Cekappumantarai, Cemmantarai, Cempuvatti, Cevappumantarai, Cevvarattinam, Civappumantarai, Irattakancanam, Kammukarimaram, Kancanakam, Kantaputpam, Kuni, Kunkumaccemmantarai, Kunkumamantari, Kuntalam, Mandarai, Mandharai, Munthari, Mantarai, Maramantarai, Segappumandrai, Segappumanchori, Segappumandarai Segapu Manchori, Segapu- Semmandarai, Shemmandarai, Sigappu- Kammukari, Malaiyatti, Palukam, Palukamaram, Palupam, Pattumantarai, Periyavatti, Perumantarai, Potattam, Tamiram, Tampiraputpi, Nattumantarai, Vataraci, Vellaippuvatti, Vennatti (Tamil), Boda, Bodanta, Bodantham, Daevakaanchanamu, Daevakanchanamu, Devakanjanamu Deva Kanchanamu, Devakancanamu, Devakanchanam, Devakanchanamu, Kaanchanamu, Kacini, Kancanamu, Kanjanamu, Mandaara, Mandara, Mandarai, Mandare, Madapaku, Mandari, Mundari, Pedama, Peddaare (Telugu)
Malaysia: Akbar Tapak Kěrbau Kotidaram, Kupu-Kupu, Tapak Kěrbau
Nepal: Kachnar, Koiralo, Taki
Pakistan: Kachnar
Portuguese: Arvore De São-Thomaz
Spanish: Arbol Orquídea, Flamboyán Orquídea, Palo De Orquídeas, Pata De Vaca
Sri Lanka: Koboleela
Swedish: Orkidébauhinia
Thai: Sio, Sio Daeng
Vietnamese: Hoa Ban, Móng Bò Đổi Màu, Móng Bò Sọc
Origin/Distribution
The plant is indigenous to southern China, the Indian sub-continent (i.e. Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan) and Southeast Asia (i.e. Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand). It is now widely cultivated elsewhere in subtropical and tropical regions of the world. It has naturalized elsewhere in the tropics in Queensland and southern United States.
Agroecology
It grows in areas that annually receive between 750 and 2,000 mm of rainfall with temperatures ranging from 21 to 35 °C. The species grows well in soils of medium fertility that are neither droughty nor wet; it is not tolerant of nutrient-poor sites found throughout India, ascending to an attitude of 1,300 m in the Himalayas.
Edible Plant Parts and Uses
Young sour leaves are eaten as a side dish with rice; flowers and flower buds are also reported eaten in India, Southeast Asia, Africa and South America (Facciola, Burkill).
Botany
A small, erect, medium-sized evergreen or deciduous to semi-deciduous tree that reaches 2–8 m in height and up to 20 cm in trunk diameter. The leaves are alternate, variable in size, ranging from 5 to 13 cm across, bilobed less than halfway, cordate base with 5–12 palmate veins and borne on 2–4 cm long petioles (Plates 1, 2, 3, and 4). Flowers 1 or few, in short lateral racemes, showy, large and fragrant; petals obovate, 3–8 cm long, 2–3 cm wide, variable in colour, either pale purple to rose or white, the uppermost one darker, with purple or crimson veins or blotches, or white to yellowish, with green veins, and purplish externally, fertile stamens 5, the anthers 5 mm long; staminodes 5 (Plates 2, 3 and 4). Pods long, narrow and pointed at the ends, hard, flat, glabrous, 13–25 cm long, 15–18 mm wide, coiled upon dehiscence to become falcate containing 10–15 seeds. Seeds light brown, rounded, flat, 15–16 mm long by11–13 mm wide.
Plate 1
Alternate, bilobed leaves
Plate 2
A white flower variety
Plate 3
Bud and open flowers
Plate 4
Close view of light purple flower
Nutritive/Medicinal Properties
Flower Phytochemicals
The flavonoids kaempferol, kaempferol-3-galactoside and kaempferol-3-rhamnoside were isolated from the ethanol extract of white flowers (Rahman and Begum 1966).
Seed Phytochemicals
B. variegata seed was found to have the following amino acid profile: linolenic acid 0.55 %, linoleic acid 36.84 %, oleic acid 26.14 %, stearic acid 16.95 %, palmitic acid 19.52 % and myristic acid traces (Zaka et al. 1983). The residual meal after the extraction of oil contained 41 % protein. Bauhinia variegata seed oil was found to have the following physicochemical characteristics (Arain et al. 2012): refractive index (40 °C) 1.4589, peroxide value 1.9 meq O2/kg oil, iodine value 84.5 g I2/100 g of oil, saponification number 191.3 mg KOH/g oil, free fatty acids 0.6 %, and unsaponifiable matter 0.9 %. The fatty acid profile comprised linoleic acid C18:2 (42.1 %), oleic acid C18:1 cis 9 (13.4 %), stearic acid C18:0 (17.5 %) and palmitic acid C16:0 (22.11 %) as the major fatty acids. Minor amounts of palmitoleic acid C16:1 (0.4 %), oleic acid cis 7 (0.5 %), margaric acid C17:0 (0.3 %), linolenic acid C18:3 n-6 (0.5 %), arachidic acid C20:0 (1.3 %), behenic acid C22:0 (0.5 %), eicosapentaenoic acid C20:5 (0.2 %) and nervonic acid C24:1 (0.6 %) were also detected. Defatted seed residue contained 41.9 %protein, 18 % oil, 4.8 % ash, 6.7 % moisture, 6.9 % fibre and 28.4 % total carbohydrate. The seed was found to have a high protein content of 29.41 % and lipid content of 14.89 (Pinto et al. 2005).
A flavone glycoside, 5-hydroxy7,3′,4′,5′-tetra-methoxyflavone 5-O-β-d-xylopyranosyl-(1 → 2)-α-l-rhamnopyranoside, was isolated from the seeds (Yadava and Reddy 2001). A galactose-binding lectin (BvcL) was isolated from B. variegata candida seeds (Silva et al. 2007). It consisted of a large content of serine, glycine, threonine, aspartic acid and glutamic acid and low concentrations of methionine, cysteine and histidine. The N-terminal amino acid sequence of 17 residues showed 90 % sequential homology to galactose-specific legume lectins of the subfamily Caesalpiniodeae. They found that the haemagglutination activity of BvcL was not specific for any human blood group trypsin-treated erythrocytes. A dimeric 64-kDa melibiose-binding lectin was isolated from the seeds (Lin and Ng 2008). A galactose-specific lectin, named BVL, was purified from seeds; it had a pattern similar to other lectins isolated from the same genus, Bauhinia purpurea agglutinin (BPA) (Pinto et al. 2008).
Trypsin inhibitors were isolated from seeds of two Bauhinia variegata varieties namely Bauhinia variegata candida trypsin inhibitor (BvcTI) and B. variegata lilac trypsin inhibitor (BvlTI) with molecular weights of about 20,000 without free sulfhydryl groups (Di Ciero et al. 1998). Amino acid analysis revealed a high content of aspartic acid, glutamic acid, serine and glycine and a low content of histidine, tyrosine, methionine and lysine in both inhibitors. Three isoforms were detected in both types. Trypsin inhibitor isoform 3 (BvcTI-3) was composed of 167 residues with a calculated molecular mass of 18,529. Homology studies with other trypsin inhibitors showed that BvcTI-3 belonged to the Kunitz family.
Leaf and Non-woody Aerial Parts Phytochemicals
Physiochemical studies revealed that the leaves had 9.42 % total ash, 5.72 % acid-insoluble ash and water-soluble extractive value of 3.30 % and loss on drying at 105 °C was 6.27 % (Modh et al. 2011). The following flavonoids, quercetin, rutin, quercitrin, apigenin and apigenin-7-O-glucoside were isolated from the leaves (Abd-El-Wahab et al. 1987). Preliminary phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of alkaloid, tannin, flavonoid, steroid, triterpenoid and saponin in different extracts. HPTLC fingerprinting for flavonoids revealed presence of two flavonoids rutin and kaempferol. Two long-chain compounds, heptatriacontan-12,13-diol and dotetracont-15-en9-ol, were isolated from the leaves (Singh et al. 2006). A new triterpene saponin, named as 23-hydroxy-3α-[O-α-l-1C4-rhamnopyranosyl-(1″ → 4′)-O-α-l-4C1-arabinopyranosyl-oxy]olean-12-en-28-oic acid O-α-l-1C4-rhamnopyranosyl-(1″″′ → 4″″)-O-β-d-4C1-glucopyranosyl-(1″″ → 6″′)-O-β-d-4C1-glucopyranosyl ester, plus six flavonoid compounds along with two cinnamic acid derivatives were isolated from the leaves (Mohamed et al. 2009).
Six flavonoids, namely, kaempferol (1), ombuin (2), kaempferol 7,4′-dimethyl ether 3-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (3), kaempferol 3-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (4), isorhamnetin 3-O-β-d-glucopyranoside (5) and hesperidin (6), together with one triterpene caffeate, 3β-trans-(3,4-dihydroxycinnamoyloxy)olean-12-en-28-oic acid (7), were isolated from the nonwoody aerial parts (Rao et al. 2008).
Stem Phytochemicals
Hentriacontane, octacosanol, β-sitosterol and stigmasterol (Prakash and Khosa 1976) were isolated from the stem bark. 5,7-Dihydroxy flavonone-4′-O-α-l-rhamnopyraonosyl-β-d-glucopyranosides (Gupta et al. 1979), β-sitosterol, lupeol and naringenin 5,7-dimethyl ether 4′-rhamnoglucoside were isolated from the stem (Gupta et al. 1980). A phenanthraquinone, named bauhinione isolated from Bauhinia variegata stem was elucidated as 2,7-dimethoxy-3-methyl-9,10-dihydrophenanthrene-1,4-dione (Zhao et al. 2005). Rhamnocitrin, a flavonoid, and other compounds 4-O-β-d-glucosylbenzoic acid, 5,3′-dihydroxy-6,7,4′-trimethoxyflavanone and 2,4,8,9,10-pentahydroxy-3,7-dimethoxy-anthracene-6-O-α-l-rhamnopyranoside were isolated from the stem bark (Surendra et al. 2012).
Root Phytochemicals
A flavonol glycoside 5,7,3′,4′-tetrahydroxy-3-methoxy-7-O-α-l-rhamnopyranosyl (1 → 3)-O-β-galactopyranoside was isolated from the roots (Yadava and Reddy 2003). A flavanone, 5,7-dimethoxy-30,40-methylenedioxyflavanone, and a dihydrodibenzoxepin, 5,6-dihydro-1,7-dihydroxy-3,4-dimethoxy-methyldibenz oxepin were isolated from the roots (Reddy et al. 2003).
Recent studies reported that B. variegata possess chemopreventive, antitumour, cytotoxic, hepatoprotective, antibacterial and antiinflammatory activities.
Antioxidant Activity
The ethanol leaf extract of Bauhinia variegata exhibited significant in-vitro antioxidant activity with IC50 value of 38.5 μg/ml for DPPH radical scavenging activity, IC50 of 70 μg/ml for nitro oxide radical and IC50 of 48.5 μg/ml for hydroxyl radical (Saraswathy et al. 2011). The level of oxidation products like lipid peroxides and hydroperoxides decreased significantly in leaf extract incubated neutrophils. Likewise, the antioxidants like reduced glutathione (GSH), catalase and superoxide dismutase (SOD) levels were increased significantly in leaf extract incubated neutrophils when compared to activated neutrophils. The methanol bark extract of B. variegata and its polar fractions n-butanol, ethyl acetate and remaining extract showed greater in-vitro DPPH and reducing power antioxidant activity (EC50 44.07, 58.09, 69.68 and 51.81 μg/ml, respectively) in comparison to non-polar fractions (hexane and chloroform) (Sharma et al. 2011a). However, all the fractions effectively protected pBR322 plasmid DNA from hydrogen peroxide-induced damage.
The methanol leaf, bark and flower of Bauhinia variegata were found to have hydroxyl radical scavenging activity (Pandey et al. 2012). All the extracts exhibited different level of in-vitro antioxidant activity which was concentration dependent. The percent inhibition (TBARS—thiobarbituric acid reactive substance) at concentration of 10–30 μg/ml was 20.86–62.58 % for the leaf extract, 19.42–60.07 % for the stem extract, 21.58–65.46 % for the bud extract and for ascorbic acid ( reference standard) 25.89–70.50 %. Methanol extract was found to be good solvent for extraction and in having good antioxidant activity. The antioxidant IC50 values for leaf, stem bark and floral buds were 17.9, 19.5 and 17.2 ug/ml respectively.
Anticancer Activity
Treatment of ethanol B. variegata (EBV) extract to Dalton’s ascitic lymphoma-bearing Swiss albino mice, enhanced mean survival time with respect to the untreated tumour-bearing mice (Rajkapoor et al. 2003b). The treatment also enhanced peritoneal cell counts. After 14 days of inoculation, EBV was able to reverse the changes in the haemotological parameters, protein and PCV caused by the tumour. Similarly they found that oral administration of EBV was effective in reducing solid tumour mass development induced by Ehrlich ascites carcinoma (EAC) cells in Swiss albino mice (Rajkapoor et al. 2003c). Further, studies using animal models showed that ethanol extract of Bauhinia variegata exhibited significant chemopreventive and cytotoxic effect against N-nitrosodiethylamine (DEN)-induced liver tumour and human cancer cell lines (Rajkapoor et al. 2006). Oral administration of ethanol extract of Bauhinia variegata (EBV) (250 mg/kg) effectively suppressed liver tumour induced by DEN as revealed by decrease in DEN induced elevated levels of serum glutamate pyruvate transaminase (SGPT), serum glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase (SGOT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), total bilirubin, gamma glutamate transpeptidase (GGTP), lipid peroxidase (LPO), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and glutathione S-transferase (GST). The extract produced an increase in enzymatic antioxidant (superoxide dismutase and catalase) levels and total proteins when compared to those in liver tumour-bearing rats. The histopathological changes of liver samples were compared with respective controls. EBV was found to be cytotoxic against human epithelial larynx cancer (HEp2) and human breast cancer (HBL-100) cells. The dimeric melibiose-binding lectin from the seeds inhibited proliferation in hepatoma HepG2 cells and breast cancer MCF7 cells with an IC50 of 1.4 μM and 0.18 μM, respectively (Lin and Ng 2008).
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