''Lysiphyllum cunninghamii'' (commonly known as the Kimberley bauhinia or the jigal tree) is a species of plant in the

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

Fabaceae The Fabaceae or Leguminosae,International Code of Nomenc ...

. It is native to northern Australia where it occurs from

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

through the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

Names

The specific epithet, ''cunninghamii'', honours Allan Cunningham, who was the botanist on the third voyage of the Mermaid with

Phillip Parker King Rear Admiral Phillip Parker King, FRS, RN (13 December 1791 – 26 February 1856) was an early explorer of the Australian and Patagonian coasts. Early life and education King was born on Norfolk Island, to Philip Gidley King and Anna Jo ...

, and who collected the type specimen of ''Phanera cunninghamii''.Moore, P. 2005. A Guide to Plants of Inland Australia (p. 361), Reed New Holland, Sydney Australia, ''Jigal'' means mother-in-law and refers to the paired leaflets, which turn away from each other, as in Aboriginal customary law where mother-in-law and son-in-law may not face or interact with one another. (See

Avoidance speech Avoidance speech is a group of sociolinguistic phenomena in which a special restricted speech style must be used in the presence of or in reference to certain relatives. Avoidance speech is found in many Australian Aboriginal languages and Aust ...

, and Dixon (1991) for 'mother-in-law' or 'avoidance' language style.)

Aboriginal language names

Jaminjung The Jamindjung, also spelt ''Djamindjung,'' are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory. Language Jaminjung belongs to the Yirram branch of the non Pama-Nyungan tongues, and is related closely to the language spoken by the Ng ...

, Ngaliwurru, Nungali: Wanyarri (Ngal, Nung), Wayili (Jam).
Jaru: gunji.

Mangarrayi language Mangarrayi (Manggarrai, Mungerry, Ngarrabadji) is an Australian language spoken in the Northern Territory. Its classification is uncertain. Margaret Sharpe originally sought to record the language but turned to the study of Alawa after the stat ...

, Yangman: Gamulumulu (Mang, Yang).

Miriwoong The Miriwoong people, also written Miriwung and Miriuwung, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia. Language Miriwoong language (AIATSIS "Miriwoong / Miriuwung") is one of the three surviving ...

:Glottolog: Language Miriwung.
Retrieved 7 June 2018 WanyarringMirima Dawang Woorlab-gerring Language and Culture Centre. 2018. Miriwoong - English dictionary

Ngarinyman The Ngarinman or Ngarinyman people are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory who spoke the Ngarinyman language. Country According to an estimate made by Norman Tindale, the Ngarinman held some of territory. Their central dom ...

: Wanyarri.

Wagiman The Wagiman, also spelt Wagoman, Wagaman, Wogeman, and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory. Language The Wagiman language Wagiman, also spelt Wageman, Wakiman, Wogeman, and other variants, is a near ...

: windinyin

Description

It grows as a

shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

up to 12 m (occasionally up to 18 m) in height with grey fissured or

tessellated A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of ...

bark. The inflorescences are axillary on old wood, with its bright red flowers being seen from April to October, followed by large, reddish-brown seed pods from November to January. The nectar produced by the flowers attracts

honeyeater The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family (biology), family, Meliphagidae, of small to medium-sized birds. The family includes the Epthianura, Australian chats, myzomelas, friarbirds, wattlebirds, Manorina, miners and melidectes. They are ...

s and native bees. The trees drop their leaves in the dry season, but new leaves often appear just before the onset of the rainy season. The leaves have two lobes joined like butterfly wings.

Distribution and habitat

It occurs on red

alluvial Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluv ...

sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of s ...

y and

loam Loam (in geology and soil science) is soil composed mostly of sand (particle size > ), silt (particle size > ), and a smaller amount of clay (particle size < ). By weight, its mineral composition is about 40–40–20% concentration of sand–sil ...

soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Some scientific definitions distinguish ''dirt'' from ''soil'' by restricting the former te ...

s, often in

watercourse A stream is a continuous body of surface water flowing within the bed and banks of a channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to by a variety of local or regional names. Long large streams are ...

s and on

levee A levee (), dike (American English), dyke (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure that is usually soil, earthen and that often runs parallel (geometry), parallel to ...

flood plain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...

s, pindan and the margins of monsoonal forests. It is found in the

Central Kimberley The Central Kimberley, an interim Australian bioregion, is located in the central Kimberley region of Western Australia, comprising an area of .

Dampierland Dampierland is an interim Australian bioregion in Western Australia.IBRA Version 6.1

Gascoyne The Gascoyne region is one of the nine administrative regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northwest of Western Australia, and consists of the local government areas of Carnarvon, Exmouth, Shark Bay and Upper Gascoyne. The Gasc ...

Great Sandy Desert The Great Sandy Desert is an interim Australian bioregion,IBRA Version 6.1
data

Northern Kimberley The Northern Kimberley, an interim Australian bioregion, is located in the northern Kimberley region of Western Australia,Ord Victoria Plain The Ord Victoria Plain, an interim Australian bioregion, is located in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, comprising .

Pilbara The Pilbara () is a large, dry, thinly populated region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal peoples; its ancient landscapes; the red earth; and its vast mineral deposits, in particular iron ore. It is also a glo ...

and

Victoria Bonaparte The Victoria Bonaparte, an interim Australian bioregion, is located in the Northern Territory and Western Australia,

Katherine Region The Katherine Region, known as "Big River Country", is one of five major regions in the Northern Territory, Australia. It is situated just below the tropical Top End. The Katherine region covers an area of , and has a population of 18,646, mak ...

IBRA The Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) is a biogeographic regionalisation of Australia developed by the Australian government's Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population, and Communities. It was devel ...

bioregion A bioregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a biogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, in the World Wide Fund for Nature classification scheme. There is also an attempt to use the ...

Taxonomy

''Lysiphyllum cunninghamii'' was first described in 1852 as ''Phanera cunninghamii'' by

George Bentham George Bentham (22 September 1800 – 10 September 1884) was an English botanist, described by the weed botanist Duane Isely as "the premier systematic botanist of the nineteenth century". Born into a distinguished family, he initially studi ...

.Bentham, G. in Miquel, F.A.W. (1852), Plantae Junghuhnianae 2: 264 The type specimen
BM000810756
was collected by Allan Cunningham in 1820 at Careening Bay in the Kimberley and is held in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

.BM000810756, British Museum.
/ref> In 1864, Bentham assigned it to the genus, ''

Bauhinia ''Bauhinia'' () is a large genus of flowering plants in the subfamily Cercidoideae and tribe Bauhinieae, in the large flowering plant family Fabaceae, with a pantropical distribution. The genus was named after the Bauhin brothers Gaspard and Jo ...

,'' and it became ''Bauhinia cunninghamii'',Bentham, G. (1864) Flora Australiensis 2: 295. and in 1956,

Hendrik de Wit Hendrik (Henk) Cornelis Dirk de Wit (24 October 1909 – 16 March 1999) was a Dutch systematic botanist who contributed significantly to the knowledge of the Aroid genera '' Cryptocoryne'' and '' Lagenandra''. He grew up in the Waterland, a ...

redescribed it as belonging to the genus, ''

Lysiphyllum ''Lysiphyllum'' is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, subfamily Cercidoideae and tribe Bauhinieae. It belongs to the subfamily Cercidoideae. It was formerly treated as part of the genus ''Bauhinia'', but recent molecular phyloge ...

'', making it ''Lysiphyllum cunninghamii''.

Uses

The leaves and pods are high in protein and minerals, and are used as fodder for stock. The dense, weeping habit means that wallabies and other animals use the trees to shelter from the heat of the day. Fires made from the wood are smokeless, and so the wood is often used for cooking. Windbreaks are made from the branches. Aborigines sucked nectar from the flowers. They made a decoction from the roots and inner bark, which was used on the skin as an antiseptic, and also drunk to treat fevers and other sicknesses. Ash from the tree is mixed with chewing tobacco, and chewed. A further use is to mix the sap with the nectar to make a chewy and tasty gum ("Turkish delight").

References

External links

NTFlora: (as ''Bauhinia cunninghamii'') (Benth.) Benth.
The Northern Territory Flora online.
FloraBase (as ''Bauhinia cunninghamii'')
{{Taxonbar, from=Q15532018 Cercidoideae Eudicots of Western Australia Fabales of Australia Plants described in 1884 Flora of the Northern Territory Flora of Queensland