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Fabaceae family

River Koko Inga vera

Native

River Koko is a perennial tree native to Puerto Rico. It grows to 47 ft and blooms Jul, with brown fruit. A keystone plant for native insects and the food web.

More about this plant

Inga vera is a species of tropical tree in the family Fabaceae. It occurs in Central and South America, where it is known as churimo, guamo churimo, guamo arroyero and guamo macho. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS — Soil & moisture
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Soil & moisture
Medium moisture
Soil pH
6–8.5
Fertility need
Medium
Adapts to
Coarse (sandy)
Hardiness
USDA zone 11+
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Planting Density (per acre) — Spacing
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) · USDA PLANTS — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Lifespan: USDA’s lifespan scale for trees: short = under ~100 years · moderate = 100–250 · long = over 250. Balsam fir and other short-lived conifers are genuinely short for a tree, not short like an annual.
Height
47 ft
Spacing
8–12 ft apart from USDA planting density
Growth rate
Rapid
Growth form
Single crown
Lifespan
Perennial · short-lived
Foliage
Evergreen broadleaf · medium texture
Active growth
Autumn
Fruit
Brown persists into winter
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed
Seed starting
No stratification needed
Seeds ripen
Spring – Winter seed-collection / harvest window
Resprouts if cut
No
Canopy layer — Sits in the canopy of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Nitrogen fixer — Fixes atmospheric nitrogen through root-nodule bacteria — builds soil fertility for itself and its neighbours, cutting fertiliser need.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Jul — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — BloomPeriod
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts Documented caterpillar host
Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0). ✦ = recorded on this exact species.
✦ Bees 1 bee visitor

1 native & managed bee species is documented visiting River Koko :

Hylaeus capitosus · masked bee
Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →
Wildlife & visitors 2 birds · 6 nectaring

Open records of who else uses River Koko — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Recorded eaten by 2 birds species (fruit, seed, browse):

Dacnis cayana · Blue Dacnis Saucerottia hoffmanni

6 adult butterfly & moth species are recorded nectaring at its flowers:

Hypanartia bella Phoebis neocypris Riodina lycisca Hylephila phyleus · Fiery Skipper Dione juno · Juno Heliconian Marpesia petreus · Ruddy Daggerwing
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (2) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (30) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[16] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[18] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[19] Ecological value — GloBI
[21] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[22] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[23] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[24] Nitrogen fixation — Werner et al. 2014 (Dryad, CC0)
[28] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[29] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[30] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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