My very first post on A4A many years ago was to find out if anyone knew the name of an old bean I had, It had been in my son in laws family for many generations and had pretty much traveled all over the place, brought out of Europe between the wars,been to several countries with ancestors before it got to the US, Canada many years before I got my hands on it about 25 years ago. I never found out what it was though. I shared this bean with several folks from A4A but the germination failed that year, I guess something in the travelling did something to my seeds as they were packed with my stuff when I moved back to the UK in 2000. I managed to get a few to germinate a year or two later but lost the plants when Hull flooded, and they were my last beans.
My son in law tried his father with no luck, but this year the old guy found a few and sent them to me, they had to be a decade old he said. I got 22 beans, I got 15 to germinate and lost two plants further down the line, but yesterday I picked half a bucket of lovely dried pods from the ones that made it. We didn't pick any this year as I wanted them to go to seeds... so full circle I now have the bean seeds back.
I still don't know what they are though, cranberry type, I have grown countless similar seeds to try to find out what they are but I guess they are just a family variation of something now, but so old.
It makes me feel well kind of nice inside.
XX Jeannine
It's stories like that which make you realise the REAL meaning of joy when it comes to gardening. It's not all about the peace, tranquility, eating fresh home grown food etc. There are other far deeper pleasures - just like the one you mentioned.
There's someone I know called Ian Sturrock who runs a fruit tree nursery up in north Wales. Nothing unusual about that, BUT Ian actually rescues old and forgotten specimens from all over the country. He then carefully grafts them on to modern root-stocks and distributes them - so that these old species (many so old that no one knows where they came from or who bred them) can survive. The joy is the knowledge of their ancestral history & the fact that they've been saved from extinction.
His web-site is at: http://www.iansturrockandsons.co.uk/
If you have an interest, check out the story behind how he saved the Bardsey Island (the legendary "Island of 20,000 saints") apple tree from extinction. Apparently it was a variety grown by the monks on the island for hundreds of years.
A single gnarled old tree was discovered near the remains of a 13th century abbey in 1999. Hailed as the rarest tree in the world it is perhaps all that remains of the monastic orchard.
http://www.iansturrockandsons.co.uk/shop/bardseyapple.html
Maybe you've also had a hand - with those beans - in dragging them back from the cliff edge of extinction! You should be proud - I hope you can increase your stock year on year!
Congratulations on growing these beans and saving seeds and keeping this old variety in circulation. That's fabulous.
It may not be any known variety at all. It may be a unique variety only kept alive by you. Just a thought!
Here are a couple of websites with many beans, that you might like to look at:
http://www.abeancollectorswindow.com/
http://joogen.bplaced.net/boh/boh.htm
(scroll down the page for a clickable alphabet to get to the varieties and photos)
http://www.bohnen-atlas.de/
perhaps easier to use and fast growing with many photos of bean seeds.
Looks like you will have to keep your growing plot, just for your special beans. :toothy10:
Quote from: Digeroo on September 19, 2013, 08:46:25
Looks like you will have to keep your growing plot, just for your special beans. :toothy10:
Trouble is runner beans are famously promiscuous! You'd have a job keeping them apart from each other!!
Fabulous, they sound great and it must be lovely to have them back again :happy7:
Here's a ink to Jeannine's original post http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,28099.msg276777.html#msg276777
Thank you all, oh gosh I fell like a hero now..a bean hero, sounds very impressive avtually. The info on the apple trees was smashing, gosh now that is a hero.
Galina, thank you for those fabulous links, the first one was new to me and was a great source of help. There were a few that seemed similar but always just that wee bit of difference. I think the Jemines one was the closest but the shape was not there.
To give a bit of info, This is pole bean but it is not a runner, however it is flat, not a deep green and when you look close you can just see some faint red streaking, very faint.It makes a great fresh bean and yet it dries to a lovely dark caramel colour with splashes of darker brown, quite a fat squat bean. The flowers are white, it is long producing prolific and tastes great . The one thing that it falls short on is that it doesn't freeze well. It hasn't got so much of that squeak to it as some beans. Now I know someone is going to say "squeak" it is a personal word that fits for me, just a feel that some beans have when I am preparing them, not sure I can explain it , anyway whatever it is it seems to follow that those that don't have it don't freeze so well.
Thank you again, I will try and post a picture when they are fully dry and the colour is bang on.
XX Jeannine