Kachnar Tree (Bauhinia variegata): Where It Grows in India and How to Use Its Buds

Kachnar is not a desert tree like khejri or neem. Its home is the low and middle hills of the Himalaya, up to about 1,800 m, and the plains of north, east and central India; Kew's World Checklist also lists Assam and the East Himalaya in its native range. ICFRE describes it as a tree of hot, dry summers and mild winters, with 500 to 2,500 mm of rain a year, and notes that it usually avoids arid tracts that get less than 500 mm.

• Grows well: the Himalayan foothills and mid hills, the northern plains, central India, the east, the north-east, the east coast and the southern peninsula.
• With care: the north-west dry zone, where young trees need water through their first two or three summers; and the wettest parts of the west coast, which get more than 2,500 mm of rain, so plant on raised, well-drained, sunny ground.

Once its roots are down, both ICFRE and ICRAF call it fairly drought-hardy. Cold is less of a worry. ICFRE lists kachnar as frost-hardy; ICRAF adds that severe frost can burn the leaves of saplings, which then grow back, so in frost-prone areas a light cover on the worst nights of the first winter is enough.

It grows best in well-drained sandy loam and copes with gravelly, rocky ground. Avoid low spots where rainwater stands. Kachnar is already a familiar garden and roadside tree in north Indian cities, and eFlora of India has records of it from Delhi.