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Post by benboo on Feb 3, 2013 20:00:18 GMT -5
Sorry to bump up this thread, but I was curious to see if there is any more information on Phaseolus polystachios. If I can grow out some seeds, I would love to try crosses with other beans, mostly runner beans.
Has anyone purchased plants? If so, how did they perform?
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Post by benboo on Jun 3, 2013 15:59:52 GMT -5
I ordered plants and they came in looking fine. I planted them in larger pots with some inoculant and will plant them in the ground soon. I also found some seeds at Oikos tree crops. If shipping is not $17 for just seeds, I might order some.(they calculate shipping on order value) Does anyone have any new info?
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Post by nicollas on Jun 12, 2013 9:30:02 GMT -5
Does someone has been able to get some seeds in the ground ? Look promising for breeding purposes
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Post by samyaza on Jun 19, 2013 6:50:27 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure P. polystachios would grow as a perennial in Europe also. I'd definitively like to grow it the same way I do for Apios americana : just transplant and admire the vine growing year after year.
There's no article dealing with breeding this species on the web.
Unfortunately, it's not genetically close to the cultivated species, but the group Lunatus is the closest to Polystachios group, so I'd try to cross it with P. lunatus, in hope some would survive the complete process from pollination to germination.
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Post by nicollas on Jan 2, 2014 10:57:02 GMT -5
I've just received my seeds from USDA today (great new year gift !). Does anyone got any advice to sprout them (do they need stratification ?) ? Any return of experience from folks who ordered plants this or last year ? Any advice/docs on breeding in the bean family (edit: i've started a thread about that) ? Too excited about potential of a perennial good bean. |
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Post by imgrimmer on Jan 2, 2014 18:18:18 GMT -5
it seems that you got the last one  . I just checked the USDA and they are not available at the moment. good luck! |
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Post by blackox on Jan 2, 2014 19:19:37 GMT -5
I've lived in the eastern U.S. all of my life and have never heard of, or seen a thicket bean. This will definitely be on my shopping list!
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Post by nicollas on Jan 3, 2014 3:16:23 GMT -5
imgrimmer I've ordered them in september so i may not have get the last ones 
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Post by samyaza on Jan 3, 2014 17:21:23 GMT -5
nicollas : I think you can expect pretty little beans. I suppose you were surprised when you opened up the seed packet, just as I was the first time I had tepary beans in my hands. It was my first time in 2013, and a success. The variety is Brown Speckled.
We're used to large beans, but in fact, it's very larger than they were in the wild. Teparies are the least domesticated.
Tepary and thicket beans seems to be about the same size.
I read some accessions don't explode their pods at maturity, that proves this species has been partially domesticated at some time in history.
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Post by blackox on Jan 3, 2014 19:38:56 GMT -5
....I read some accessions don't explode their pods at maturity, that proves this species has been partially domesticated at some time in history. Domestication attempt by the eastern Native Americans I suppose? I wonder why Thicket beans don't have separate cultivars like the Tepary bean does? Abandoned project, or just a relatively late start? |
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Post by blueadzuki on Jan 3, 2014 20:25:07 GMT -5
If I was to hazard a guess, I'd say that those groups simply got other beans that they found more attrative for them to work on, and relegated the thicket to that shadowy realm between wild and domestic where you might sow some on the edges of your territory as a backup "wild" food to rely on when and if times got tough, but not something you'd bother with much when the harvest was good; knowing that it was wild enough to take care of itself. You get a similar story over here on the East coast with the fuzzy bean (Strophostyles leonitas/helvola ) and in much of the old world with grasspea and a lot of the vetches and tares.)
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Post by nicollas on Jan 4, 2014 2:57:50 GMT -5
samyaza I was not surprised as i've seen pictures from Eric Toensmeier. If there was a perennial col hardy big seeded bean it would have popped all around permaculture circles But it has great potential if taken by amateur breeders
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Post by samyaza on Jan 4, 2014 11:27:55 GMT -5
blueadzuki : I suppose there are plenty of abandoned crops, along with extinct varieties of them. It's such a shame. A flagrant example is Hablitzia tamnoides that was re-discovered only recently and is under the influence of some fashion effect. It's a good thing, but some crops could definitively have given really interesting domesticated crops, more than some ungrateful domesticated crops. I'm thinking of Lathyrus tuberosus. It's been collected for centuries in Europe, especially during starvation. I find it really tasty, delicious, the plant itself has a good ornamental value and is abundant in the wild. The real issue with it is to collect them. Yields are poor and the place they grow make them particularly difficult to harvest. I suppose these two factors are linked to each other.
But nicollas, which accessions did you receive ?
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Post by nicollas on Jan 4, 2014 15:35:03 GMT -5
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Post by blueadzuki on Jan 4, 2014 17:22:48 GMT -5
samyaza: Oh I agree completely, there is a great shame in that. Though in a certain sense, it also might be good those crops got abandoned; had we put our energies into them long ago as we did with some others, we might have domesticated them to the same point of dependece we did with some of the others, and then when, down the road we cast them aside, they could not have managed to eke out waht little existance they did retain to survive so we could rediscover them. Rememember there are quite a few crops that we have domesticated so heavily that the wild form is actually EXTINCT or even completely unkown, like fava beans. Heck while I put it on the list, techically, grasspea has no confirmed living wild ancestor, the self sufficient ones are closer to "feral". Or we could have wound up with something like corn, where we have selected to the point where in our long term absence, the plant CAN'T survive or thrive.
That's one of the reasons I love going through those bulk bags of beans and seeds that come in from Asia, along with the out and out weeds, a lot of them have tiny quantities of versions of veggies far older and more archaic that even the vast majority of what one will find in the heirloom lists, probably due to farmers who toss a little of thier older seed somewhere (or as some of these can take care of themselves, just not agressively rouging it all out, the way we in the Modern West have been taught to do for. as a combination green manure/fodder/backup. In those hunts I have found (though unfortunately not in amounts sufficent for sharing, so don't ask) peas the size of vetch seeds, and favas like BB pellets, wild soybeans and near wild grasspeas, adzuki's and mungs in all of the other colors they can be (besides red) and mungs in some of the others besides green, bizarre semi-domestic cucurbits and the odd little wheat I nicknamed "minimus". The variations never end.
Yes I imagine that L. tuberosus might have become an interesting crop with a bit more domestic selection, sort of a European Jicama. Who knows with enough breeding they might even have made one where you could eat the seeds too without worrying.You can breed the toxin levels down, some scientists in Aleppo said they did it with Grasspea a decade or so back.
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. I just checked the USDA and they are not available at the moment.
