I have to say this plant did not seem awfully productive. It averaged about three mature seeds per pod, admittedly it was in a pot.very nice looking seeds from Andikove.i could get some but not very many that looked that nice.
I have a relative traveling to Germany soon so I looked up Kipferlbohne and found some promising shops in Germany using that term. I could order and she could carry it back here. I visited in January and looked eagerly for beans after reading about German regional heirloom beans online, but the town (Bavaria) was quite bean free. Even the Biomarkt and Reformhaus (the organic/healthy foods shops) had only little packages of pinto and black soybeans. And when I looked at the big online German shops they had a lot of varieties that are common in America. So I didn’t end up bringing any back.
) - I reserved half the packets of network beans so I can try again if needed. 
Usually, you cannot find such beans in cities and supermarkets and you will indeed find them only in small shops or through cooperatives. I think the only exception is in Switzerland where the Swiss foundation for the cultural and genetic diversity of plants and animals works together with the largest retail and wholesale company in Switzerland and there you can find quite a large selection of such seeds in their garden stores.
ybbser-kraeutergarten.at
Yes! That's it! You know your beans @Oxford! I believe I grew the other Aloisia last year.
Sorry to hear that @jbrobin09. It's been a difficult bean year for me as well. It's good luck you planted Carminat, one of the earlier beans that is really good quality. I know I sent some of them to a fellow SODC member who is really into fresh beans, and she thought it was one of the best purple beans she's tried. Looks like you'll be able to harvest some seeds from your plants. Always hope for a better season next year. I love growing beans, but they are quite particular in their needs, and I feel like if anything goes off the rails they aren't survivors, at least not like many of the other vegetable plants.Well, it’s been a terrible year for beans here. Our summer up until August only had a handful of days that broke 20C (none over 25C) so the beans germinated but not well. They were quite sickly. We finally got some heat in August but we are almost at our fall frost date so some of them won’t produce seed most likely as they didn’t start flowering until end of August. I didn’t put all my beans in one basket (
I will get some seed from pole bean Carminat, which I planted in a large pot on my deck. (I may do more of that next year if we have a cool start again.) It’s my first time growing Carminat and it is a very tasty snap bean! Highly recommend. It also seems fairly productive despite the cool weather.
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I wonder too @Triffid. And I don't find that family of curly beans necessarily similar on all counts. Some of them seem extremely early and others, like the photo I posted, are quite late. Certainly variation in colors, seeds & most of all maturity. And there are both bush and pole selections too, so even more puzzlement.With common beans you oftentimes find traits mirrored in populations on both sides of the Altantic. Exceptions to this generalisation are the shiny 'greasy' beans from the Appalachians and these curved Kipfler beans which appear to be exclusively clustered in regions around the Alps.
Interestingly there doesn't appear to be any varieties with this phenotype from the Americas, and they are absent from Europe more broadly, except in this limited area. What piques my interest is the obscure reason as to why?
Did the trait arise in the region? Is there a genetic linkage between the genes for curved pods and a particular adaptation that makes them thrive in a that particular climate? Why did it not travel further? Were they selected simply because they satisfied the human penchant for the aesthetically appealing, or did they serve some other purpose before the rise of modern agriculture? Are curved pods a chance mutation of a single gene, or is pod curvature something controlled by multiple genetic factors that take generations of rigourous selection to reach such extremes?
Alas, I'm now hypnotised by the spirals
I need answers, but I do not need another bean project
