The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Inga is a genus of hundreds of small tropical, tough-leaved, nitrogen-fixing trees and shrubs in the pea family, grown for shade and ornament. Growing them well means giving them full tropical warmth and a sheltered spot, since the genus is not reliably frost-hardy.
Inga is a genus of small tropical, tough-leaved, nitrogen-fixing trees and shrubs, subfamily Mimosoideae. Inga's leaves are pinnate, and flowers are generally white. Many of the hundreds of species are used ornamentally.
Several related plants have been placed into this genus at one time, for example Yopo (Cohoba, Mopo, Nopo or Parica – Anadenanthera peregrina – as Inga niopo).
Alley cropping techniques using species of Inga have been developed to restore soil fertility, and thereby stem the tide of continual slashing and burning of the rainforest. Species which have proven effective for alley cropping include Inga edulis and Inga oerstediana. Much of the research was done by Mike Hands at Cambridge University over a 20-year period. Inga species are also commonly used as shade trees for coffee, cocoa, and tea.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Inga 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.
