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Enterolobium cyclocarpum
Also called Devil's Ear, Earpodtree, Elephant's Ear, Ear Tree, Earpod, Elephant Ear Tree
1 NParks heritage tree in Singapore: Found in Fort Canning Park, along path behind the Fort Wall and The Legends
A large, broad-crowned tropical shade tree, often called guanacaste or elephant-ear tree, widely planted in pastures and coffee farms. It suits warm, frost-free sites with room to spread, and grows well in most low-elevation tropical soils.
Enterolobium cyclocarpum, commonly known as conacaste, guanacaste, caro caro, devil's ear tree, monkey-ear tree, or elephant-ear tree, is a species of flowering tree in the family Fabaceae, that is native to tropical regions of the Americas, from central Mexico south to northern Brazil (Roraima) and Venezuela. It is known for its large proportions, expansive, often spherical crown, and curiously shaped seedpods. The abundance of this tree, especially in Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica, where it is prized for the shady relief it provides from the intense sun, coupled with its immensity, have made it a widely recognized species. It is the national tree of Costa Rica.
In North America, it is often called elephant-ear tree, due to the shape of the seedpods. Other common names include devil's ear and earpod tree, parota, and orejón (Spanish) or huanacaxtle (Nahuatl).
Tolerant of a wide range of rainfall levels, temperatures, and soil conditions, they can thrive in most low-elevation, tropical habitats. Guanacaste trees are highly valued as ornamentals, and the shade they provide creates many an oasis on the searing and sun-baked plains in its Pacific slope habitat.
It is widely grown as a shade tree to shelter coffee plantations and for shade and forage for cattle; it also improves soil fertility by nitrogen fixation. The guanacaste is found in USDA Growth Zones 10–12.
Guanacaste trees appear to delay the onset of fruit development—some 9 months—so that seed maturation coincides with the start of the rainy season. This adaptive behavior presumably is an adaptation to give germinating seedlings as much time as possible to establish root systems before the start of the next dry season. Both the jatobá (Hymenaea courbaril) and the cenizaro (Albizia saman) exhibit similar reproductive strategies. Of course, guanacaste trees—like all deciduous and semideciduous species in this part of the world—share in the water-conserving benefits of dry-season leaflessness.
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Enterolobium cyclocarpum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
