Plant · P-074

Ice Cream Bean

Inga edulis

Ice Cream Bean grows foot-long pods packed with sweet, vanilla-flavored white pulp - the fruit that gives it its name - and can bear within two years of planting. As a nitrogen-fixing tree it doubles as a shade canopy over coffee and cacao in tropical alley cropping, dropping heavy leaf litter that builds soil and holding cleared slopes with its roots. It coppices well for firewood and yields a moderately hard, durable timber once mature. It needs frost-free warmth and dies outright below about -2 C, so it only survives where winters never truly freeze.