"yard long" beans.....what's the cuttoff?

[blueadzuki]

While checking over my cow peas a few days ago, I noticed one of the plants is producing pods, that, while not technically "yard long length, are abnormally long (I measured and they are 11 inches) 

This let me to thinking, is there some criterion to define whether a cow pea is or is not a "yard long" bean BESIDES the pod length? Does ANY cow pea that hits 18 inches (the general actual length of yard longs) count, or is there some other thing that is needed? I I had a bean that hit 18 inches but did not have some of the other traits that yard longs usually have (such as elongated, kidney shaped seeds)?* would it still count? Yard long beans are listed as a separate subspecies (sesqipidale) so one would assume there is some legitimate reason why this is so, as opposed to calling it a type or variety.


* sub question, what happens to the seeds of a cow pea with extended seeds (such as a yard long) if it is crossed with one with compressed seeds (such as a crowder). Do you get a bean with average sized seeds again, or one with elongated seeds with flattened ends (so rectangles)?   

[philagardener]

"Sesquipidale" literally translates as one and a half feet. (I never have seen one that is a full yard long.)

[steev]

My recent trial of Black Crowders as "green beans" showed that they are stringy, which long-beans are not; haven't tried other cowpeas this way, yet.

[blueadzuki]

There are some out there that work well. I remember last year as I was doing final pre-freeze cleanup I ran an immature pod of one of the plant along my teeth and found it quite sweet (now if I could only remember if that one produced any mature seeds before that, and if I still have any).

Another issue, not to get too far off track (I really don't want the original question I put in this thread to get lost in too much side discussion) is that a lot of cowpea pods do not get all that "meaty". You get some that show a plumpness similar to a common bean that makes them a good choice, but for a lot of them, the pod is so thin and constricted that they look like an unwrapped mummy's finger, and you can practically see the whole of the seed's shape from the outside.

Getting back on track, I think that they sometimes go the opposite way to what I proposed originally (long length, short seed) . I just remembered a few years ago, when I lost my best chance to get mature seed of one of the unidentified long beans I buy off the veggie stands in Chinatown (that type is very pale, so I thought the pod was a lot more mature than it actually was). A big part of why I made that mistake was that for some reason (bad pollination?) the pod was only about 8 or 9 inches (so in the same ball park as the pods of the "common" cowpeas) so in that case, had I gotten the seed and had my guess at the reason been wrong and successive generations been the same length, as that first pod would it have no longer been a long bean?

[zeedman]

Well, although I grow quite a few different yardlongs, maybe the question is not length, but whether the pods are suitable for use as snaps. Pretty much all of the climbing long-podded cultivars I've seen appear to have been bred to be used immature. I have several other cowpeas with edible pods that are 8-12" long (at least two of which I know were bred for that usage), and not all of them climb. Climbing or not, all of those share two common traits - fleshy pods that are slow to develop fiber, and kidney shaped seeds. They may share one other trait, which distinguishes them from cowpeas grown for seed - their geographical origins. All of the yardlongs & cowpeas with high-quality pods appear to be of Asian origin, whereas cowpeas grown for seed appear to be mostly of African origin.

I'm not sure what a cross between a yardlong & a crowder would look like. Cowpeas don't appear to cross very easily (at least in my location); I grow both yardlongs & cowpeas in my rural plot every year, and the only cross I ever had was between two yardlongs. I think my Northern bees don't know what a cowpea is.

[steev]

Right, zeedman, those northern bees haven't a clue; prolly don't even like bacon grease.

I didn't know there were cowpeas of Asian origin; time to do some homework.

[blueadzuki]

I'm not sure they know on their home turf either. From what I have seen in my own plants, most cowpea flowers open up really early in the morning; by the time the sun is really up and the bees active, the flowers are closed (in fact I think the only time I have seen cowpea flowers open is on days when it was overcast or drizzly). Some don't seem to open at all, the closed flower just sloughs off and the pod starts swelling (or why for some of my peas I don't actually know what color the flowers are on the inside).

The one question I would raise with regards to the geographic origin theory is the fact that a lot of seed cowpeas are grown in India and China as well. I suppose it is possible that all of these came to Asia in a sort of second wave from Africa (since the center of origin for cowpeas is Africa, all cowpeas must have come from there initially. But it would seem odd to me that all of the first infusion of germplasm would have morphed into something used for vegetables (which in the hierarchy of early food domestications usually rank lower and later than edible seed production) and a group for the original purpose being re-introduced later as opposed to the plasm being split (some cowpeas bred for veggies, some for seed) right from the first introduction (the first would sort of be like if the Native Americans had first created sweet corn, and only later started breeding flour corn).

There is also the matter of the itsy-bitsy cowpeas. Since a lot of my planting stock comes from contaminant seed I pull out of other things, I often see stuff that is on the more extreme ends of the morphological bell curve. One seed I see quite often is a black cowpea that is notable for how tiny the seed is, about lentil sized (I've measured it against a rice pea [which seems to be the benchmark for tiny size in named cowpea varieties, and a rice pea is almost triple the size). I have to assume that these are some sort of fodder cowpea (I don't know specifically if cowpeas are grown for fodder, but given how small the seed (and so, I assume the pod and plant) is I can't think of any other use it would be put to.) But the tiny size leads me to assume it is a very old one, probable less heavily bred and more resembling the wild cowpea. And this is coming from Asia. (indeed the only reason I don't think it is a wild cowpea, is that I can't think of a reason that the wild type would have been introduced to Asia when the domestic already existed.)

[blueadzuki]

Aug 22, 2016 21:25:31 GMT -5 blueadzuki said:

Getting back on track, I think that they sometimes go the opposite way to what I proposed originally (long length, short seed) . I just remembered a few years ago, when I lost my best chance to get mature seed of one of the unidentified long beans I buy off the veggie stands in Chinatown (that type is very pale, so I thought the pod was a lot more mature than it actually was). A big part of why I made that mistake was that for some reason (bad pollination?) the pod was only about 8 or 9 inches (so in the same ball park as the pods of the "common" cowpeas) so in that case, had I gotten the seed and had my guess at the reason been wrong and successive generations been the same length, as that first pod would it have no longer been a long bean?

And it now look like I will never know. The veggie stand I bought them at seems to have closed, so unless someone else starts carrying that variety (and I have yet to see someone who is since I started going to Chinatown) it's probably gone for good (so if anyone ever bumps into a wide very pale green long bean whose mature seeds are half white, half horticultural (red with pink mottling) let me know*

*The same if you see one with very wide pods which are noticeably rugose (wrinkly or ridged) and mature seed that is "black eyed"

[blueadzuki]

Was wandering around the net and found this photo



while it probably isn't exactly the same kind as the "wrinkly" one I mentioned (unless this is a really unripe one, where the seed has not yet developed the black eyes) but it does sort of have the "wrinkles" (those these seem much more shallow than the ones I remember)