Ice cream bean

Small trees up to 17 m tall, with broad spreading crown, almost flat; bark gray; trunk usually contorted, cylindrical, 30 cm or more in diameter and branching 1–2 m from base; leaves simply pinnate, 10–30 cm long, with 4–6 pairs of large oval leaflets, each pair separated by a winged rachis, the smallest pair below, the terminal leaflet 1.5 dm long and half as broad, membranous, minutely pubescent on both surfaces; flowers fragrant, sessile, solitary, arranged in crowded heads at tips of stems, peduncles 2–4 cm long, or flowers may be solitary in upper axils and fasciculate and subcorymbose below; calyx puberulent, striate, 5–8 mm long; corolla silky-villous, 14–20 mm long; bractlets oblong-lanceolate, about 5 mm long, caduous by full anthesis; pods with very thickened sulcate margins, 4-angled, up to 2 m long, 1–3 cm in diameter, flat or twisted, with white sweet pulp surrounding the seeds. Fl. Feb.–May; fr. several months later.