legume
Every article and hero in Arborpedia that touches this subject.
№ 034TreesBauhinia: The Orchid Tree With Butterfly Leaves
A flowering legume whose blooms mimic orchids and whose twin-lobed leaves fold like a butterfly's wings or a camel's foot — including a sterile hybrid so admired it became the emblem of Hong Kong.
Jul 2026Read →
№ 104TreesCoral Tree: Scarlet Flowers, Living Fences, and Nitrogen for Free
A thorny tropical legume that blazes with red bird-flowers on bare branches, roots from a cut stake to make an instant living fence, fixes nitrogen — and hides toxic seeds.
Jul 2026Read →
№ 191TreesGolden Shower Tree: Thailand's Cascade of Gold
A legume that hangs itself with cascading chains of pure golden flowers — the national tree and flower of Thailand — and swings long dark pods whose sticky pulp is an ancient gentle laxative.
Jul 2026Read →
№ 192TreesGorse and Broom: Nitrogen Fixers That Burn and Invade
Spiny, yellow-flowered legume shrubs that colonise the poorest ground, fix nitrogen, fire their seeds explosively — and become fierce invaders abroad.
Jul 2026Read →
№ 217TreesHoney Locust: Vicious Thorns, Sweet Pods, and a Ghost of Lost Megafauna
A legume tree armoured with branching spikes, hung with sugary pods, that turns out not to fix nitrogen — and whose fruit was built for animals that no longer exist.
Jul 2026Read →
№ 227TreesInga: The Ice-Cream Bean That Grows Alleys of Fertility
A fast tropical legume with sweet cotton-candy pods, that fixes nitrogen, shades out weeds, and anchors 'inga alley cropping' — a system that lets farmers grow food on the same plot for good instead of burning new forest.
Jul 2026Read →
№ 249TreesKentucky Coffeetree: Enormous Leaves, Poison Pods, and a Failed Coffee
A rare legume with the largest leaves of any North American tree, seeds that make a bad coffee substitute and a dangerous raw snack, and no living disperser.
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№ 255TreesLaburnum: Golden Chains and Deadly Seeds
A small tree hung with cascades of yellow flowers in early summer — every part of it poisonous, and its heartwood a substitute for ebony.
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№ 290TreesMesquite: The Deep-Rooted Legume That Feeds and Invades Drylands
A thorny desert legume that fixes nitrogen, taps water metres down, feeds people and livestock with sugary pods — and has become one of the world's worst dryland invaders.
Jul 2026Read →
№ 338TreesPagoda Tree: The Scholar Tree of the Chinese Temple
A graceful legume planted for millennia at Chinese temples, palaces, and scholars' tombs — flowering cream in the late-summer lull, yielding a yellow dye and a medicine, and, in one famous case, the tree an emperor died on.
Jul 2026Read →
№ 346CropsPeas and Beans: The Crops That Pay Rent
Legumes that fix their own nitrogen, why you cut the tops and leave the roots, and the difference between broad, French, and runner beans.
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№ 533TreesYellowwood: The Rare Native With Wisteria Flowers and a Dyer's Heart
One of the rarest trees in the eastern American forest — a legume with smooth beech-like bark, hanging chains of fragrant white flowers, and yellow heartwood that gave a dye and gunstocks.
Jul 2026Read →