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Post by hortusbrambonii on Apr 5, 2013 6:47:41 GMT -5
I bought some weird-looking white dry beans in an Asian supermarket where they had more weird legume stuff. They were labeled 'board beans' in English, which I suppose to be a spelling error for 'broad beans', since they were called 'fèves' in French and 'tuinbonene' in dutch, both names for fava beans. I quite doubt that they are fava beans though, fist because the seeds do not look at them to me, and secondly, when I put in some of those seeds in a fava shoot experiment (with the Turkish Fava beans I also used for sprouting) something complete unlike fava seedlings came up, pulling the seed up and giving single heart-shaped bean leaves... Anyone who can tell me what it is? Attachments:
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Apr 5, 2013 6:51:22 GMT -5
Picture with 2 seedlings, to get the idea. Does more look like some kind of real bean to me... Attachments:
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Post by robertb on Apr 5, 2013 13:25:02 GMT -5
They certainly look like bean seedlings! Grow them out and see. Those seeds look a bit strange, so I'm not going to guess.
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Post by steev on Apr 5, 2013 14:32:54 GMT -5
They don't look like common beans to me, that "tail" on the seed and the round-bottom leaf is unfamiliar.
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Apr 5, 2013 14:48:30 GMT -5
I will definitely grow some of these out when I plant my beans around the last day of expected frost (half may). I don't know what kind of growing behavior I can expect, but I suppose it's a Phaseolus or Vigna species, the almost heart-shaped first leaves (but they're more round) remind me a bit of regular P. vulgaris beans although I'm not completely convinced. The 'tail' is some kind of soft almost fluffy stuff that I don't know of.
Vicia faba is definitely out of the question...
The seedlings are a bit light-colored and too long because they were grown with not that much light in a pot with pea and fava been shoots that are used in the kitchen by now. They are slower to germinate than peas and V. faba and dry out faster, and the germination rate seems lower...
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Post by galina on Apr 5, 2013 16:19:50 GMT -5
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Post by raymondo on Apr 5, 2013 17:00:35 GMT -5
I'd go with what galina said. They certainly look like lablab beans, or a close relative thereof.
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Post by blueadzuki on Apr 5, 2013 18:35:55 GMT -5
They are indeed lablab beans. They are similar to the type called Van or Vanna Dal used in Indian cooking, though not neccecarily exactly identical (the Chinese types tend to be a bit bigger and flatter than the Indian ones and usually have a slighty thicker glossier seed coat.) If planted they make a plant the same as the normal lablab most people grow in their gardens as an ornamental (though being white they have green leaves and white flowers, as opposed to the purple ones most of the ornamentals do)
Unlike the darker seeded versions the Vanna Dal type beans are edible when fully mature, though they smell a bit strong. Also a lot of those I've met who actually EAT them (I grow them, but just for ornamental purposes) say it is not a bad idea to remove any that show a black or brown hilum (the white bit covers a lot of the hilum up, but there is a little "tab" of extra the exends past the white part on the top and the bottom, and a little "nipple" at the top) or red,brown or black spots along the back of the seed (I can almost GUARANTEE there are a few in your bag, they seem to be in the whole population). Thse have a slighty higher alkaloid content than the pure white ones. It isn't high enough to be really dangerous (especially when diuted with all the pure white ones) but it IS supposed to be enough to make them taste really nasty. Ironcally a while back I got my hands on some bags of lablabs that were of a much lower grade that the "industry standard" and they were ALL black hilums, with some that had so many spots they had merged together. Bad for eating, but great for me that wanted to plant some (I have a theory that since the white seeded ones are green leaved and white flowered and (some) of the black, purple, and brown seeded ones are purple leaved and flowered, that the white ones with black speckles are somewhere in between, and may produce plants that have pruple highlited leaved with either lavender or two tone flowers. This however is the first time I've found seed with strong enough speckling to really test the theory.)
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Post by 12540dumont on Apr 5, 2013 19:35:38 GMT -5
I have read that you cannot eat the dry seed of lablab. (Please don't poison yourself trying to let us know)!
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Post by blueadzuki on Apr 5, 2013 19:57:12 GMT -5
I have read that you cannot eat the dry seed of lablab. (Please don't poison yourself trying to let us know)! When they say that they usually mean the black seeded kinds (like Ruby moon i.e. the ones you plant in your garden for the foliage and flowers) I certinly wouldn try to eat soaked maure lablab seeds RAW (I'm not sure I'd eat ANY mature bean seeds raw) but the white kind HAVE to be edible when properly prepared; if they weren't they wouldn't sell them for eating (and I have never heard about having to leach them). That does however bring up an interesting question. In addion to bags of mature white, the Indian grocery stores also sell two kind of lablab beans as vegetables a short whitish green kind (like a green version of the ruby moon pod) and a very long one that looks a little like a fava bean pod (it isn't it is a lablab I've opened a few) As vegetables, both of these are sold seriosly underripe usually. However by digging through supplies I have been able to find more mature pods of both, pods with seeds mature enough to be viable (which I what I wanted) I actually have a pot of the short green ones going now (as far as I can tell mature seed for this one is probably brown, but could be purple, or even white (they come out of the pod green so I don't know if the color they got when dried was the "real" mature seed color). I haven't gotten a long pod to grow yet but mature seed for that is a lot harder to find (it's a purple seeded one with seed that is a bit more pointed and angular) and I never planted my best (so what did get planted may have been simply too immature to be viable.) The question (not that anyone here can probably answer it) is, how mature do the beans have to get before they're too risky to eat? as soon as the seeds start expanding? when the seed coats start changing color? I honestly don't know (and don't really want to find out) I alway simply assumed that what maturish seed I found were by-harvest like with the parval gourds which are also eaten immature (Ones with mature seed do sneak trough, but are not considered safe to eat (I've actually had trouble buying then; most of the stores are reluctant to let people buy fruit they consider spoiled). But for all I know they are still fully edible. |
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Apr 6, 2013 2:09:26 GMT -5
Thanks for the identification and info...This really is a forum full of experts!
A wite relatively flat-seeded Chinese form of hyacint beans/lablab (dolichos lablab or Lablab purpureus) of which the seeds are edible? Wow...
Never heard of that one.
I thought the seeds of lablab were poisonius indeed. But I suppose they won't sell anything more poisonous than a kidney bean in an asian supermarket? But then again they eat weird thing that i wouldn't touch too...
They have several other dried bean types I did not recognise with strange names from India/Nepal. It's acrtually the kind of small Asian supermarket where one wouldn't be surprised to find small amounts of dried foods from all important planet in the galaxy in certain corners, but where you also can find your Lipton ice tea green in small bottles...
If I cook with them I'll remove the ones with a dark hilum or spots... If I dare to do that, maybe I'll just stick to my Turkish fava beans...
I suppose I can expect a giant climbing plant with white ornamental flowers then, which might not go to full seed in our climate...
Last question: those seedlings, would they be edible when boiled?
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Apr 6, 2013 2:37:00 GMT -5
Also, these seeds are really flat, if we use a serious pumpkin seed as standard unit(like Vif rouge d' Etamper or Hokkaido maxima pumpkins) it is overall not bigger than a pumpkin seed unit, most seeds are slightly smaller, and not thicker than 2 pumpkin seeds.
I don't suppose immaturely harvested beans could ever be dried like this and be viable?
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Post by blueadzuki on Apr 6, 2013 6:10:35 GMT -5
Oh yes, that sounds like most of the Indian/Chinese supermarkets I visit, you can potentially find anything there (one Indian near me actually sells betel nuts, which I wasn't aware were even LEGAL to sell in the US) and the legumes section is usually filled with odd things (I currently am running to one store and hauling back about 13.5 pounds of rice beans a week, because the bags also have a smattering of non red adzuki's (and the occasional wild soybean) Horse gram (little reddisk thing like a tiny flat kidney bean) Pigeons peas, more types of cowpeas than you can imagine and so on.
That description of the plant sounds sort of accurate
I have never heard of people eating lablab sprouts. The Indians don't eat a lot of beans sprouted and the Chinese tend to prefer smaller beans for sprouts. So I have no idea if the sprouts would be edible.
That description sounds pretty accurate. In general the Indian kind are smaller and (proportionally) fatter. But as with any bean there are variations, I think I've seen ones that were basically pea spherical, and and I said, the long podded ones seeds are almost cylinders.
Not a chance, I speak from experiance. Lablab beans seem to take a long time for the insides to mature. Basically if the skins hasn't basically turned all the way to it's mature color, the insides arent ready and dried the bean won't grow. I suppose if you climate was mild enough you could re-plant immature seed fresh and have some of it grow, but I have no gurantees (and if you had a climate that could do that, you'd have a season long enough that you could let the first seed mature all the way and wouldn't need to plant immature seed in the first place.)
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Post by hortusbrambonii on Sept 7, 2013 14:57:59 GMT -5
plants are still not flowering and we had a near-tropical summer, so I don't expect anything of them anymore...
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 7, 2013 17:19:01 GMT -5
Yes the can take a long long time. I have only one plant that MAY have flower buds (it has little clusters of buds that look like a flower panicle, though they could just be another sort of leaf node. Which is probably the one "from the bag" lablab that made it in and survived, as opposed to the ones that I grew from seed I extracted from overripe fresh pods sold as vegtables. (and which appear to be too long season for here) And even they are barely started. I'm beginning to think Ruby moon and the other ornamental ones sold for horticultural purposes here are REALLY REALLY short season for the species..
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