Accession Data:
Inga edulis Mart.
- Common Name: Ice Cream Bean
- Family: Fabaceae Juss.
- Country of Origin: central and south America
- Habitat: along margins of large rivers and in wooded swamps
- Description: Mature trees of Inga edulis reach 30 m (98 ft) high and 60 cm (2.0 ft) diameter at breast height, usually branching from below 3 m (9.8 ft). The branches form a broad, flat, moderately dense canopy. The pods contain black seeds which are embedded in a thick white juicy pulp that tastes slightly like vanilla ice cream.4
The leaflets possess cup-like extra-floral nectaries that encourage mutualistic ant colonies which defend the plant from predation.
- Culture: Propagation Notes: Reduce surface area of compound leaves, apply indolebutyric acid (IBA) Hormodin 2/3, then place under mist. 6
- USDA Zone: 9b-11
Accession Data:
- Accession # 198500714
- Source: Unknown
- Accession Date: 12-31-1985
- Bench: 1310 - NEOA: Ground Bed 2 NW
- Currently: active - healthy
- Qty: 2 confirmed on 03-24-2025
Classification:
- Division: Magnoliophyta
- Class: Magnoliopsida
- SubClass: eurosid I
- Order: Fabales
- SubOrder:
- Family: Fabaceae
- SubFamily: Mimosoideae
- Tribe: Ingeae
- SubTribe:
Flowering Data:
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References (internal):
- Plants with Extrafloral Nectaries
- Beverage Plants
- EEB 3271 - Systematic Botany
- AntU - Learning from the Complex Society of Army Ants & Their Guests
- Plants used in EEB 2244 - General Ecology
- Accessions with Embedded Video Files
- EEB Greenhouse Holdings native to: French Guiana / Guyana / Suriname / Venezuela / Bolivia / Colombia / Ecuador / Peru / Brazil West-Central / Brazil Northeast / Brazil Southeast / Brazil North / Brazil South
References (external):
- The Plant List (2013). Version 1.1. Last accessed on Tuesday, July 18, 2017.
- Inga edulis at ARS-GRIN. Last accessed on Tuesday, July 18, 2017.
- The Double-Crossing Ants to Whom Friendship Means Nothing at Deep Look (YouTube Channel). Last accessed on Tuesday, July 18, 2017.
- Inga edulis at Wikipedia. Last accessed on Wednesday, July 19, 2017.
- Image #00 (cropped) and #01 (original) by Haplochromis (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons. Last accessed on Wednesday, July 19, 2017.
- Brennan, E.B. & Mudge, K.W. Vegetative propagation of Inga feuillei from shoot cuttings and air layering, New Forests (1998) 15: 37. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006594207046. Last accessed on Wednesday, February 14, 2018.
data regenerated on Mon, 24 Mar 2025 08:39:08 -0400 [bcm v4.0]
Images:
Additional images for this accession:
Click on thumbnails to enlarge
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Subfamily Mimosoideae
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W/C = Wild Collected
= indicates flowering in past 14 days
= images available for this accession
= map available for this accession
= accession added within past 90 days