Growing Bauhinia Kockiana In My Garden

Bauhinia Kockiana or Bauhinia Coccinea is a tropical, woody plant or vine. It is also known as Kock's Bauhinia, Climbing Bauhinia or Red Trailing Bauhinia.

Bauhinia Kockinia has dark green leaves and bright striking orange flowers.

Bauhinia Kockinia is a climbing vine and its branches need to be supported.

This climbing vine grows well in normal garden soil with good water drainage. It also loves the sun and needs regular watering and fertilizing.

The beautiful flowers bloom in clusters. They are gorgeous and very eye-catching even from afar.

These are how the leaves and flower buds look like.

The flowers start from yellow, then they change to orange.

Then from orange they turn to orangey red in colour.

When I first planted my Bauhinia Kockinia plants, they took a long time to flower.

But once they started to flower, they have been flowering faithfully.

Bauhinia Kockinia flowers throughout the year round.

This is the seed. In each seed pod there may be one to three seeds. The seeds are flat and round, about half an inch diameter. When the seeds are matured, the seed pod and seeds will be dark brown or black in colour. The seed pod will then explode open and the seeds will be dispersed.

It is not easy to propagate this plant. I have collected the seeds and tried propagating by using seeds but the success rate is very low. I have also tried propagation with stem cuttings and it is also not very successful. I am hoping to try marcotting to see if it works.

So far, only those seeds that have dropped onto the soil and germinated on their own have a better success rate.

Here is one seedling which has sprouted out from the soil on its own. A few times I have dug out some seedlings but they didn't survive. I hope this will not be harmed by the extreme heat.

Due to the extreme heat in my area for the past few weeks, my Bauhinia Kockinia plants have suffered "heatstroke" and the leaves and flowers have curled and dried up. The leaves are falling all over and my plants are almost bald. This has happened before a few times whenever the weather is extremely hot. But after I have trimmed off the dried parts, the plants sprout new shoots again and after some time with much care and watering, the plants are back to normal again.

Out of the stump of David's family will grow a shoot -
yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root.
And the Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him -
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
(Isaiah 11:1-2, New Living Translation-NLT)