Wanigan Associates REVIVAL! photos of star beans added

[Blue-Jay]

Hey Marshall !

What do you call those pretty Blue/Gold beans. They look like the finish on some of these modern colorful bowling balls you might see in a bowling center's pro shop. Those deeply colored Flor de Mayo beans make mine look washed out. Wow ! Very pretty indeed.

 

[897tgigvib]

Russ, they came in several versions, kind of like the seed I planted was F2.

I will indeed be sending you some of each, the best and most mature ones. They were so late to mature some of the seeds I call "premies". I usually get 30% germination or better with decent premies. But I'm sending you the mature ones.

That group I'm giving names like "Blue/Gold Star" "Night Star" and "Shooting Star", but if you grow them and find they are something different or have a more appropriate name, feel free to rename them. For me that group was the longest and slowest to mature. I'm going to start a few around February 1st, and a few March 15th.

My Flor De Mayo beans really did a thing sorting into different color variations. I have some that went the other way that have almost no flecking, and I am calling "Colorful Bolitas". Others went in the direction to having purple flecking, and a pretty group of them have that nice pink rose colored flecking. One plant of them sure made beans that for all the world look half way between flor de mayo and ojo de cabra.

The native seed search site is a regular treasure trove of diversity! My packet of Capirame was a mix that included your capirame horticultural type, large and late, but that also had the blue/gold and some very productive purple ojos bolitas, that i separated out and am calling pastel ojos.

This photo set is just part of my collection. I also have a lot of the usual ones. Still trying to get a true breeding larger seeded cutshort mayflower. I think I'm dealing with a dominant gene or 2 there. Dominant genes are harder to stabilize. Could that be what your Pentland Family is?

I have your Little Brown Cat underlined for sure! My similar looking bean is a nice pole though. Whew, sure is hard to tell ancestry when the bumblebees could have brought pollen from so many others!

Your Dapple Grey! What a splendid unique Bean!!! Chickasaw, amazing! I have to tear my eyes away from looking at the unavailable ones!!!

 

[897tgigvib]

This is the black powder pole bean I'm so far calling Nova Star. I have a good number of these from one plant.

 

[hoodat]

There are so many varieties of beans. Every culture seems to have its' own. I saw some in Oklahoma that were carried over the trail of tears. I've always been fascinated by the Anasazi bean. To think they were sealed in a clay jar in a cave for hundreds of years and still grew when planted. They are fairly easy to come by now and all descendants of the beans in that one jar. It makes you wonder what happened to keep those who stored them there from returning to plant them.

 

[897tgigvib]

Hoodat, those you saw in Oklahoma, what did they look like? I have a variety called Cherokee Trail of Tears that in the past few years has become widespread. Black seeded, and quite good and variable. The pods are also variable, and they vary even on the same plant. The special thing about them is how truly multi purpose they are. The pods can be the deepest purple almost black, or they can be a nice green with only a hint of purple. Mine do a pretty good late season repeat. They are a second early to crop bean, and are a good pole climber.

I understood though that the story about them was, starving, cold, and exhausted as the Cherokee were, even dying, they gave these bean seeds to some white people along the way, I thought in Tennessee. Where did I read that? Probably in some seed catalog 10 years ago.

I would like to know what the Beans you saw that were carried over looked like. Makes me wonder if there is another Cherokee Trail of Tears variety.

Southeastern Native Beans...

 

[Blue-Jay]

Hi Everyone !

Marshall emailed me today and told me to say hello to everyone here for him. He is having some sort of trouble loging on to the EasyGarden forum. I don't know if it's his email server that is down or his satellite connection. I'm sure he'll be back soon when he gets it figured out.