Pulsegleaner
Garden Master
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2014
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- Lower Hudson Valley, New York
Hi all
This story is going to need a little background
Some years ago, I was going through a bag of black skinned cowpeas (note for southerners, I'm going to use cowpeas because I am a Northerner and am used to thinking of English Peas as "peas" and given what I am talking about, calling cowpeas just peas is going to get confusing really quickly) from Vietnam I had bought some time previously and put away. Originally there was not much of interest in there (a few with red speckles, that was pretty much it). Then I happened to flick part of a seed-coat off one and made an intriguing discovery, a large number of these cowpeas had GREEN cotyledons, which I had never seen in cowpeas (peas sure, but cowpeas?) So I tossed all of them outside (I had tried flicking the seed, but with a whole 3/4 lb bag my hands got tired fairly soon, and the green is light enough that, once soaked telling it from the standard yellow white the rest were became all but impossible) to see what would happen. At the time, nothing did as the only two plants that made it to seeding happened to be white cotted ones (though they themselves were quite interesting, as one had skinny constricted purple pods and the other had plump pods that were actually yellow white i.e. what would be called "wax pods" if it was a bean*) So the question of whether this greenness was genetic or a peccadillo of poor harvesting (say harvesting a little too young) remained unsolved. And I was unable to find more of these cowpeas to try again (I found similar appearing material from Thailand, but those were all white inside).
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I was going through a handful of mixed black cowpeas and soybeans I had purchased from an herb shop (the soybeans had a smattering of ones with a tiger striped seed-coat I wanted to play around with) I idly flicked a seed-coat on one of the cowpeas and......the same green cots met my eye. I quickly put the cowpeas away (including going back through my discard bag and fishing out any ones I had already tossed and carried them all home. Two days later I had checked all of them (a combination of a smaller number and being more stubborn, it took me two days) and now have a bag of pure green. So next year I will start them (inside initially, since they now all have broken seed-coats) and assuming I can get any through the onslaught of the critters, I should get a definitive answer.
* An immature pod also gave me the information these are not just black but black eyed black (that is they have a black eye on a black base)
This story is going to need a little background
Some years ago, I was going through a bag of black skinned cowpeas (note for southerners, I'm going to use cowpeas because I am a Northerner and am used to thinking of English Peas as "peas" and given what I am talking about, calling cowpeas just peas is going to get confusing really quickly) from Vietnam I had bought some time previously and put away. Originally there was not much of interest in there (a few with red speckles, that was pretty much it). Then I happened to flick part of a seed-coat off one and made an intriguing discovery, a large number of these cowpeas had GREEN cotyledons, which I had never seen in cowpeas (peas sure, but cowpeas?) So I tossed all of them outside (I had tried flicking the seed, but with a whole 3/4 lb bag my hands got tired fairly soon, and the green is light enough that, once soaked telling it from the standard yellow white the rest were became all but impossible) to see what would happen. At the time, nothing did as the only two plants that made it to seeding happened to be white cotted ones (though they themselves were quite interesting, as one had skinny constricted purple pods and the other had plump pods that were actually yellow white i.e. what would be called "wax pods" if it was a bean*) So the question of whether this greenness was genetic or a peccadillo of poor harvesting (say harvesting a little too young) remained unsolved. And I was unable to find more of these cowpeas to try again (I found similar appearing material from Thailand, but those were all white inside).
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I was going through a handful of mixed black cowpeas and soybeans I had purchased from an herb shop (the soybeans had a smattering of ones with a tiger striped seed-coat I wanted to play around with) I idly flicked a seed-coat on one of the cowpeas and......the same green cots met my eye. I quickly put the cowpeas away (including going back through my discard bag and fishing out any ones I had already tossed and carried them all home. Two days later I had checked all of them (a combination of a smaller number and being more stubborn, it took me two days) and now have a bag of pure green. So next year I will start them (inside initially, since they now all have broken seed-coats) and assuming I can get any through the onslaught of the critters, I should get a definitive answer.
* An immature pod also gave me the information these are not just black but black eyed black (that is they have a black eye on a black base)
.
