Bauhinia trees are everywhere across south Asia and no place more than Hong Kong where the beautiful Hong Kong Orchid, Bauhinia blakeana flowers for an incredible 6 months of the year!
We’re looking for help from you! We want to record where Bauhinia are all around Hong Kong, what types there are and when they’re flowering or producing seeds. And you never know, you could be the one to find the elusive seeding ‘blakeana’ – an exciting scientific prospect that has often been reported but never confirmed!
A good place to start is over at our resource page “Know your Bauhinia” where you can learn how to identify the different types of Bauhinia in Hong Kong and you can print off a handy visual guide to carry with you.
Then, for recording your Bauhinia sitings you have a couple of options.
First, it would be really great if you could use this form to tell us where and what you’ve seen (check out our Google Form). If you’re not online while you’re out and about, you could print this Bauhinia identification table and then submit your sightings when you get back home.
Second, if you’re on social media like Twitter or Instagram you can take a photograph of the Bauhinia and post it with the hashtag #BauhiniaWatch, perhaps adding which type of Bauhinia you think it is. This option is a bit less scientific but will really help us build a buzz about Bauhinia while we attempt our crowdfunding and try to get Hong Kong excited about science.
That’s it for now, why not go out on a Bauhinia hunting hike with friends and family? We hope to arrange some events like that in the coming months so do watch this space!