Tepary Beans

[Joseph Lofthouse]

The growth habit of tepary beans is sprawling. I've seen some seed catalogs call some varieties bush beans, but what I think that they mean by that is that they form a clump of vines about knee high. Even if you give them poles, they won't twist around and climb to the top. They might lay on top of something, but only because they happened to grow or get blown in that direction, not because they were actively climbing.

I think the labels pole vs bush as applied to tepary beans is mostly about the paucity of gardening vocabulary available to the authors of seed catalogs and their target audience. Modern seed catalogs write like beans are either bush or pole. In the real world, there is a spectrum of growth habits: vertical bush beans, horizontal bush beans. Bush beans with tendrils. Twining tendrils. Non-twining tendrils. Long vined sprawlers. Short vined sprawlers. And then it depends on growing conditions.... Sometimes a variety that is as well behaved vertical bush bean sends out tendrils a couple feet long.

In my own garden, a variety has to have vines about 6 feet long that twist around things in order to be called a pole bean. The rest get called bush beans, even if they send out tendrils.

Feb 13, 2015 7:14:56 GMT -5 hortusbrambonii said:

I read something about a P. vulgaris x acutifolius cross (was it a Carol Deppe variety?) so that must be possible.

I think that the participants in this thread have pretty much concluded that the "Black Mitla Tepary" that Carol's cross started with was actually P. vulgaris which had been mislabeled as P. acutifolius by the seed industry. (We couldn't find any tepary traits segregating out in the F3/F4 population. The "Black Mitla Tepary" offered commercially by Carol's neighbor Alan Kapuler matches the vulgaris phenotype.)

[flowerweaver]

Tepary beans, in general, are neither. All the ones I've grown, including this one, are knee high and dense mat-forming. They become an impenetrable bramble with multiple branching. I don't grow mine on any support.

[oxbowfarm]

Feb 26, 2015 10:58:33 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

I think the labels pole vs bush as applied to tepary beans is mostly about the paucity of gardening vocabulary available to the authors of seed catalogs and their target audience. Modern seed catalogs write like beans are either bush or pole. In the real world, there is a spectrum of growth habits: vertical bush beans, horizontal bush beans. Bush beans with tendrils. Twining tendrils. Non-twining tendrils. Long vined sprawlers. Short vined sprawlers. And then it depends on growing conditions.... Sometimes a variety that is as well behaved vertical bush bean sends out tendrils a couple feet long.

In my own garden, a variety has to have vines about 6 feet long that twist around things in order to be called a pole bean. The rest get called bush beans, even if they send out tendrils.

I think that the participants in this thread have pretty much concluded that the "Black Mitla Tepary" that Carol's cross started with was actually P. vulgaris which had been mislabeled as P. acutifolius by the seed industry. (We couldn't find any tepary traits segregating out in the F3/F4 population. The "Black Mitla Tepary" offered commercially by Carol's neighbor Alan Kapuler matches the vulgaris phenotype.)

Professional bean breeders do have terminology to describe this, they classify vining habits as types 1-4 (they use roman numerals, but I refuse to use roman numerals for anything due to their obvious stupidity) Type 1 is determinate. Types 2-4 are indeterminate with varying levels of sprawling and climbing ability. Type 4 is considered wild type, that is your classic pole bean with vines that will reach 10-20 feet. You don't hear much about those classifications because bean breeders pretty much confine their work to type 1 and 2 because they are machine harvestable. Almost no breeding work gets done with type 3 or 4 and if it does it is mostly people like us.

Tepary beans don't fall neatly into these classes but I'd say they are closest to type 3. They vine all over the place, but it is a highly branched vine. They show virtually no apical dominance which is a major characteristic of P. vulgaris beans. They also are less interested in climbing, although they do climb sort of. This makes sense in a desert adapted plant. In the desert the one thing there is no shortage of is sunlight, so you don't need to put a lot of energy into getting good at climbing over everyone else to find some. And if you stick way up in the air you just dry out faster.

I've said it before, Mitla Black is not a tepary bean. To use Joseph's favorite terminology, it is an aggressively promiscuously pollinating Phaseolus vulgaris. The only thing remotely tepary about it's phenotype is the tiny leaves.

[oxbowfarm]

Bean vining phenotype classifications.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Feb 26, 2015 13:38:26 GMT -5 oxbowfarm said:

Bean vining phenotype classifications.

Thanks. So the four types would be:

Determinate
Upright Indeterminate
Prostrate Indeterminate
Climbing

[hortusbrambonii]

Thanks. So I better expect a low-growing plant that needs a lot of space and not something small that stays in its place nor something that with help grows mostly vertically?

[DarJones]

I have a bean that was developed from a cross of a Nuna X small black seeded bush bean. It is interesting because the bush trait is covering up some very strong genes for climbing. It must be hilled up to maintain the stem in a vertical position because the root attachment point is structurally weak and allows the plant to fall over.

I also have a true half-runner that make vines up to 5 feet long and is a good climber on a short trellis (Striped Bunch).

Many of the beans from western regions are "prostrate sprawlers" that produce short runners up to 5 feet long but rarely climb. I have 3 or 4 varieties with this trait (Anasazi red, Zuni Gold, and Rio Zappe).

Standard climbing beans such as Turkey Craw, Rattlesnake, and Fortex make up the last type.

So my lexicon for beans is Bush, Half-runner, Sprawler, and Climber.

I have to go outside standard beans, but there is a fifth type that Sword Beans exhibit. It is best described as an extremely vertical climbing trait. Each plant makes 3 to 6 runners that shoot straight up and climb on anything they can attach to. This habit is similar to climbing beans but in an extreme vertical growth pattern.

[nicollas]

Architecture types of beans :




I find the type 3 pretty confusing between subgroup a and b. I have beans hopefully of type IIIa to try this year

[hortusbrambonii]

So Tepary-beans are more like IIIa?

Most of the beans I've grown were more in the traditional categories. Helda, rattlesnake, monastic coco pea bean, Cherokee TOT and scarlet runner are pole types, my yellow-podded 'boterbonen' (Dutch word for yellow snap beans, forgot which race), dragon's tongue and those 'Turkish pinto' thingies are dwarf types. Yin-yang was somewhere in between though, too much runners for bush beans. So the 2-category-system has more or less work for me thusfar...

(except for yin-yang disturbing the balance of the 2-party system. Is that how taoism is supposed to work? Or are they the white dot in the black field?)

[hortusbrambonii]

And, wait, 'Black Mitla' you said?
That's one of the two I was going to try.
Vreeken has them listed and sells them a as Tepary too...
www.vreeken.nl/049400-tapery-bonen-black-mitla

A promiscously pollinating P. vulgaris doesn't sound like the best idea. What I like about P. vulgaris is that they all self-pollinate and mind their own business without getting involved with each other so I can grow a lot of them...

[flowerweaver]

Yes, my teparies have looked like IIIa. I grew something last year crossed with Black Mitla. The beans produced didn't look like teparies but the plant resembled the form of the rest. I think it was oxbowfarm that pointed out in another thread there was some question on whether Mitla is really a tepary.

[hortusbrambonii]

I just read this whole thread as it exists now, and it seems that 'Black Mitla' (The only one sold by Vreeken) or at least some of the beans sold under that name is indeed just P. vulgaris but a Tepary-looking one. I will grow a few plants and pay attention to the seedlings.

So the only Tepary that I have to try that I'm sure of is adaptive seeds 'Sacaton Brown': www.adaptiveseeds.com/tepary-bean-sacaton-brown-organic
"Amazingly drought & heat tolerant, they prefer sandy alkaline soils, but Sacaton Brown performed well for us even in our relatively heavy acidic soil & cool climate." I'll only try to find a realy dry and sunny spot for them...

[steev]

My Blue-Speckled teparies, which sprouted scattered a month ago and got frost-killed, are now sprouting more numerously and robustly; guess I won't till and re-plant that area after all.

[zeedman]

Up until now, I have been reluctant to try tepary beans. I'd read several articles which claimed that most teparies carried viruses, and didn't want to risk infecting my other beans. But several years ago, I observed a "virus free white tepary" growing on SSE's Heritage Farm. It definitely had the type IIIa growth habit. This year SSE offered it through the Yearbook, and I ordered seed... I seeded some into pots for sprouting. I'll post results (if any) on this thread.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I grew a new variety of tepary bean this summer. They came to me from the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance: