2021 Little Easy Bean Network - Bean Lovers Come Discover Something New !

[Blue-Jay]

Bluejay77's Big Bean Show
Day 16 - The Beans I Grew This Summer​

Kenearly - Bush Dry

15 inch tall plants produce 4 to 4 ½ x ½ inch pods with plump, short, oval, white beans with a yellow figure around the eye. The variety was bred in Kentville Nova Scotia Research Center to rippen the seed crop nearly all at once. However I did not find this to be the case with the ones I grew, as the bean rippened and dried pods intermittently over about three weeksk the same as many other dry beans.

Koronis Giant Pinto - Bush Dry

16 inch tall plants with white blossoms. 4 to 4.5 inch pods that contain pinto colored and patterned beans. Pods are easy to hand shell with thin pods walls once dried. A Robert Lobitz named bean. He received the original seed in a packet of bean crosses from Dan Jason of Salt Spring Seeds of BC Canada. He introduced this named bean through the Seed Savers Exchange yearbook.


Kenearly.................................................................................................Koronis Giant Pinto


Kishwaukee Green - Bush Snap

This bean came about as an out cross I found in 1977 in Cherokee wax. Black and tan mottled seeds. I thought after discovering these seeds that I would have just another wax bean. I named it Kishwaukee Yellow. Upon growing out those mottled seeds in 1978 a green podded bean appeared in the row. Thus Kishwaukee Green was born. Upon growing out the Kishwaukee yellow and green I discovered that the beans produced not only the mottled seed coats but also a solid black and a buff or cream tan seed coats. Both of these beans still produce three seed coats still to this day. I thought the beans were unstable. However the upon observing the plants they are very uniform. I told this to a fellow I met that was a plant breeder for the Cargill Inc. I can not repeat his explanation but he basically explained that with some crosses a bean might always produce multiple seed coats. He said it is likely that my bean is not unstable.


Kishwaukee Green...............................................................................Kishwaukee Green alternate seed coats


Koronis Little Red Trout - Bush Dry

14 inch tall plants with pink blossoms. Pods up to 4.75 inches contain small red and white Jacob's Cattle patterned beans. From a packet of bean crosses Robert Lobitz received from Dan Jason of Salt Springs Seeds, BC, Canada. Robert introduced this bean through the Seed Savers Exchange yearbook in 1999.


Koronis Little Red Trout

 

[Zeedman]

Is it just me, or does every purple podded bean (at the edible stage anyway) - pole or bush - have a beige seed? I realised this year that both Purple Peacock and Blue Coco have identical seeds. Then I looked at Purple Teepee and Purple Queen beans, and while the shape of those is way skinnier and smaller, they are the same colour as PP & BC. I don't think I have a purple podded bean that doesn't have this colour of seed.

I've wondered that too. All of the purple-podded pole beans I've grown have very similar seed coats; beige, sometimes with a grayish or purplish tinge. It could be that there is a genetic link between purple pods & beige seed coats (as suggested by @Bluejay77 ). Or it could be that purple poddedness is a fairly recent mutation, and while several variations have emerged, there has not yet been a great deal of genetic drift.

In contrast, there is a great deal of diversity of seed coats in wax beans... perhaps because greater effort was spent on breeding them, or because their origin predates purple beans. @Bluejay77 , how far back can you trace the origin of purple-podded beans?

 

[flowerbug]

Oh yah! I forgot about those! That's true, those are purple podded beans too. I completely forgot about that variety. It's a good question isn't it?

i think so far there are at least four other beans that i've seen that have similar coloring and pattern to Blooming Prairie.

as to beige being the only color i have some pole beans that get purple pods and mixed in with the beige seeds i also have some solid black seeds. what were given to me were solid beige only seeds but in my first grow out i had black seeds.

 

[flowerbug]

...
What is amazing is all the different purple podded beans that Robert Lobitz got with all those seeds that look like Blooming Prairie. He didn't get any beige seed. How did that happen?

my guess is that he found some bean out of Africa or Europe that hadn't had previous widespread exposure in the USoA. i'm doing my best now to rectify this tragedy.

note that of my entire harvest for every year i've grown the varieties with these colorings/pattern that i've had only a few show up that were not the same and i consider the dark more solid purple colored bean (with just some white around hilum) to be a possible reversion to one of the parent beans and the single other bean has some brown on it. that's it. out of several hundred thousand beans (maybe closer to a million now that i've gone through all the beans for this season).

i have enough of the dark more solid beans that i keep replanting them seeing what they may do next, but since they came from my original Purple Dove seeds i just mix them in with everything else so i'm keeping the overall mix of the blend intact - i haven't yet block planted them to see if the same seeds are giving back the pattern or if it is just a part of the blend itself that has this feature. either way i like the color and diversity it adds so i'll keep on with them too.

 

[heirloomgal]

I looked around for any information about a relationship between seed coat expression and pod expression. The scholarly published data - the only place to look it seems - is so bogged down in scientific jargon and chemical references, not to mention short forms like QLV247 , that it's really hard to locate & extract the specific information on that topic. It's out there for sure, but how to find it is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. So I basically found nothing on purple pods, partly I'm sure because they are not a huge commercial item generally.

However, I did find a few juicy morsels in there. All new to me, but maybe not to others, but I thought I'd post a little just in case.

So, I knew of course beans have health benefits. I attributed a lot of that to high fibre, and a nice amino acid compliment. But after reading some articles, I realise that it is much more than that! Even these published academic papers mention how overlooked P. vulgaris is as a 'nutriceutical'. Never heard that before. Turns out they are high in quercetins, anthocyanins, they are free radical scavengers and generally possess high antioxidant activity. There was a long account of the health benefits to beans. I think we'll all live a long time.
I always ate 'em because they taste so good! 🤣

Also, there are no white beans found in the wild, that is, wild germplasm. It is only found in domesticated varieties.

Last of all, a study was done of nearly 1,000 beans ascensions in Europe. I don't know how much this can represent a family with such a huge family tree, but this is the colour representation they found.
Brown - 300
Beige - 222
White - 151
Black - 79
Red - 66
This is surprising to me since I have quite a few beans varieties, and only one of them is brown in the 'brown bear' sense. In Italy, of the 168 landraces they studied, white seed coats as well as the 'Borlotto' bean coat type was by far the most common.

I though this last paragraph was worth noting, though I have no knowledge of genes.

The genetic control for color of immature pods is influenced by the Y and Arg genes: Y Arg exhibits green pod, y Arg yellow wax pod, Y arg greenish gray (silvery) pod, and y arg white pod [4]. The y allele conferring yellow pod color was mapped to Pv02 by Koinange et al. [8]. The B gene which regulates the production of precursors of anthocyanins pathway above the level of dihydrokaempferol formation also resides on Pv02 [16]. The genes Pur and Ro influence a range of pod colors from rose to purple pods [17]. The Ace gene produces shiny pod [18].

I think 'Red Swan' is a wonderfully coloured bean pod when sun is allowed to get in the bushes. That rosey reddish colour is so unique. I haven't seen any other pod out there quite like it.

 

[flowerbug]

i think so far there are at least four other beans that i've seen that have similar coloring and pattern to Blooming Prairie.

after yet more looking i'm up to the following RL beans that are similar in seed coat/pattern (and a few at the end are close but not as related and then the one at the last may be a distant relative):


Bush beans:

Blooming Prairie (fuchia flower color)
Delano (lavender flower color)
Purple Diamond (not sure but i think the same as PDove)
Purple Dove (i consider it a purple color but others may call it fuchia)
Purple Rain (not sure but i think the same as PDove)
Purple Rose (not sure but i think the same as PDove)


Purple Rose Creek is also noted as a semi-runner
Viola has the same pattern but is semi-runner. don't know the color of the flowers to this one (@Bluejay77 do you recall it?).


honorable mention:

Chaska Purple


very often i find hints of this bean in PD and it is quite possible that the brown bean i found this season is related to this bean:

Koronis Three Islands

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77 , how far back can you trace the origin of purple-podded beans?

I will have to do some research on this subject.

 

[jbosmith]

To add to the purple podded mystery, check these out. This is Turtle Peas and some years a fairly high portion of the pods are purple. It varies from plant to plant, not pod to pod, and the plants with the purple pods will also have purple tinted leaves. It seems to be environmental and not genetic. I don't know exactly what the trigger is but the same batch of beans will express this between maybe 0-20% of the time depending on the year and where I plant them. The beans are always 100% black with no variation in seed coat.

ETA: I should say that the purple tinting in the leaves happens when the vines dry back, sort of like fall leaf color. It's not visible in the middle of summer.

 

[Artorius]

@flowerbug
This year I got an Ocean View off type which has a similar color pattern to Dapple Grey but instead of grey it is navy blue.
I'll take a photo this weekend. On working days I go to work while it is still dark, and when I come back it is already dark

The Ocean View off type I wrote about looks like this.

 

[flowerbug]

The Ocean View off type I wrote about looks like this.

View attachment 45568

wow! i sure hope it becomes stable! you may have some fun surprises coming back from those if you replant them all.

i have some Dapple Gray seeds that have hints and markings of blue in them, but as of yet none much beyond that. i always put them aside for replanting.