2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[Blue-Jay]

This should be fun! It would have perhaps been easier if SSE had not deleted their online Super Yearbook - which I believe they have yet to restore? Beuller???

I remember something they used to have online called the yearbook history or something like that. You could look up a variety and see who had listed it and in what years. You could pretty much figure out from that how a variety circulated around to who and when. I spent hours upon hours with that feature of their website. It's been so long since they had that on their website can you imagine the amount of new data that has piled up. I think the longer they don't have that yearbook history the less likely they will every bring it back unless the can sort the data somehow.

 

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77 Last night I was perusing the aisles of A Bean Collector's Window looking for network beans etc. and came upon your bean called Schwarze Dalmatin...........and then another bean called Dalmatin! Ummmm.....I did not know that those were two different beans, I thought they were the same thing! Oooops!

So the beans I sent you to fulfil Jack's Dalmatin bean pledge were actually Schwarze Dalmatin...not Dalmatin!!! I guess I should have looked to make sure they were the same bean! I'm sorry! I thought I had the bean he needed! Well, at least its 60 more beans for you of something!

That really good that I'm getting some Dalmatin again because I think I sent it out to someone and it never came back. I searched the freezer lists and it's not there anymore. The Schwarz bean you just missed two letters at the end Schwarz Dalmatiner. Dalmatiner looks much like our black Trout and Dalmatin is a rounded bean with a large black eye patch. Anyway thank you very much. I don't know if the person that has Dalmatin will every return any new seed.

 

[Jack Holloway]

That really good that I'm getting some Dalmatin again because I think I sent it out to someone and it never came back. I searched the freezer lists and it's not there anymore. The Schwarz bean you just missed two letters at the end Schwarz Dalmatiner. Dalmatiner looks much like our black Trout and Dalmatin is a rounded bean with a large black eye patch. Anyway thank you very much. I don't know if the person that has Dalmatin will every return any new seed.

That is me. I still have 1/2 the pack you sent me. Growing in pots didn't work for me. I can send what I have left back to you. Or maybe someone else would like to try to grow them out. Next year is a no go for them.

 

[Zeedman]

I remember something they used to have online called the yearbook history or something like that. You could look up a variety and see who had listed it and in what years. You could pretty much figure out from that how a variety circulated around to who and when. I spent hours upon hours with that feature of their website. It's been so long since they had that on their website can you imagine the amount of new data that has piled up. I think the longer they don't have that yearbook history the less likely they will every bring it back unless the can sort the data somehow.

The sad thing is that at one point, nearly all source data was deleted from SSE listings... not just SSE's listings, everybody. All of mine that was in the 'source' field vanished. Until that was fixed (it appears to work now) I added source info to my descriptions (since re-entered in 'Source'). The deletion appeared to key onto the word "from". As I am going through these older yearbooks, the difference is glaring - a majority of the listings give their source.

This was further disrupted by SSE's decision to abandon the previous inventory codes (BEAN___, PEPPER___, etc.) and switch to Accession #'s - with no cross reference. So for many varieties, the chain of custody has now been irrevocably broken. With as much emphasis as SSE places on history - to the point that it guides their accessions policy - it is really strange that there has apparently been no effort to fix this. The ability to trace varieties is necessary to locate where a corrupted name entered the community (I've watched some of mine get corrupted) and to trace where crosses entered the system, so they can be eliminated.

 

[Jack Holloway]

@Bluejay77 Would you like a list off all the beans Robert Lobitz listed in 1998, or just his varieties? Also, I can give you my yearbooks, that I have which you are missing, if you'd like them.

Edited do add : I'm just scanning through the bean listing looking for ones Mr. Lobitz listed, and found Kenearly that he got from USDA, stating it was from Hungary, but below that is Kenearly Yellow Eye, which some one listed, having gotten their seed from Mr. Lobitz in 1993. So maybe we should try to find the 1993 yearbook and see if Mr. Lobitz listed that year. And maybe this is an example of someone changing the name (or adding to it) from what Mr. Lobitz listed.

 

[Zeedman]

I've completed a census for all of the MN LO R bush beans listed in 2000, and in 2002-2005. Having gone through your list, I realize you are looking only for beans Robert developed - not the numerous USDA & SSE beans he obtained from others. And having seen so many of Robert's listings, I also realize that:
(a) he didn't like pole beans, or any wax bean;
(b) he did some intentional crosses;
(c) I found that there is a 2nd bean named Atlas, which matches the variety I grew this year! So if it is misnamed, that mistake goes a long way back - to Vermont Bean prior to 2000.

Sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings, @Bluejay77 , but there are a lot of Lobitz beans still left to search for. You probably already know some of these. I will list them below under the year where I first found them:

2000:
Black Hawk
Prince of Korea (he renamed a PI#)
Prince Purple
Trout, Brown *
Trout, Gold *
Trout, Purple *
* = for these, he neither named a source, nor claimed to develop them

2002
Koronis Golden Navy
Princess Rose
Zebra Night

2003
Cedar Lake
Red Eagle Kidney (the same as your Red Eagle?)

2004
Crow River Speckles
North Town Little White
Swan Islands (= your Swan Island?)

2005
Bonanza Little Pinto
Chaska Purple
Delano
Early Bird
Early Goodland
Golden Valley
Granite Eyes
Snowbird Pinto (= your Snowbird?)
King's Night (= your Kings Knight?)
Purple Glory
Queen Bee

 

[Zeedman]

I was not aware that someone else could have developed any of his beans after his death in 2006. I figured that what ever he must have listed in the yearbook in the fall of 2005 was the end of the road for an new bean titles from him. Who would have been those developers after 2006?

I remember Alan Kapular (OR KA A) being interested in Robert's beans after his passing. So given that Alan is a breeder, when I saw Peace Seeds introducing some of Robert's beans, I just assumed that they were from his unfinished breeding projects. After reviewing Robert's listings, I see that those beans had already been offered by MN LO R before his death.

(crawling into my bean corner now)

 

[Blue-Jay]

Sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings, @Bluejay77 , but there are a lot of Lobitz beans still left to search for. You probably already know some of these. I will list them below under the year where I first found them.

Some of these bean names my not be his originals. Brown Trout is not a Lobitz bean amongst your 2000 listed names. Brown Trout which I have is an Ernest Dana original bean listed by Earnest in the early 1980's and also donated to Wanigan Associates back then. Speaking of trout names I do not agree the way they have trout beans listed in the yearbook for convenince of lumping them all together in one place. They list a bean as Trout, Gold instead of Gold Trout. Another type of beans they do this way is Cranberry beans. There is a bean called Cranberry Goose that I have that is listed as Goose, Cranberry. I have had members request the bean from me missing the comma and it seems they think the beans name is Goose Cranberry instead of the other way around. They also do this to Soldier beans. I ran into one of the employees of SSE at a campout one year who also agrees with me on this subject.

I found a couple on my spread sheet that I don't know how I missed putting them on my list but they are now on my edited list.

So the new names of Robert's orignal beans that are on your lists are. I'm not going to consider a naming of a USDA PI number as a Lobitz orignal

Zebra Night - 2002
Crow River Speckles - 2004 - Crow River Speckles which I have known about.
Early Bird - 2005
Early Goodland - 2005
Granite Eyes - 2005
Purple Glory - 2005
Queen Bee - 2005

@Zeedman Thank you so much. Your list helped me find some names I do have and found them on my spreadsheet. I missed a couple. So my edited list of Lobitz beans that I do have is currently 95 after deleting the double entires found by @flowerbug. If I go through my spreadsheet again I might even add to that list. I had a list of Lobitz beans I had made and saved on Files on Facebook, but since Facebook deleted my Russell Crow account (which is another story) that data is now gone. I think I had a list of about 105 Lobitz original bean names. There is another named bean that Robert picked a bean out of a shipment of beans to him from Brazil called Brazil Little Black. A Black Turtle type bean that I did obtain from SSE. Which is not actually anything that was created in his gardens. Technically all the beans he named and picked from a bag of outcrosses he got from Dan Jason of Salt Spring Seeds in Canada are technically not anything that came about in Roberts gardens, but since he worked on stablizing them I will include them on my list of original Lobitz beans and consider them as such.

I wonder about the Lobitz legacy beans that I'm working on from Lobitz marterial that was obtained 2 years after Robert's death. I name them after places in Minnesota after I am satisfied that they are stable. How many of them could even be from crosses that are happening in my grow outs as they are grown among beans of my collection. Are these beans actually now my original named beans. What would the consideration be for this same material that was grown by Ron Thuma for 5 seasons and possibly exposed to beans in his collection for those seasons that I had obtained from him in 2015. What would be the consensus of everyone here that reads and contributes to this Little Easy Bean Network thread?

 

[Blue-Jay]

This was further disrupted by SSE's decision to abandon the previous inventory codes (BEAN___, PEPPER___, etc.) and switch to Accession #'s - with no cross reference. So for many varieties, the chain of custody has now been irrevocably broken.

This is an interesting topic of consideration too. Seed Savers Exchange employs a full time seed historian working on trying to discover the orignal source of varieties in the SSE collections. How does this broken chain of custody impact this historians work? What data does this person have to work with.

 

[flowerbug]

...
I wonder about the Lobitz legacy beans that I'm working on from Lobitz marterial that was obtained 2 years after Robert's death. I name them after places in Minnesota after I am satisfied that they are stable. How many of them could even be from crosses that are happening in my grow outs as they are grown among beans of my collection. Are these beans actually now my original named beans. What would the consideration be for this same material that was grown by Ron Thuma for 5 seasons and possibly exposed to beans in his collection for those seasons that I had obtained from him in 2015. What would be the consensus of everyone here that reads and contributes to this Little Easy Bean Network thread?

i think if you have done the work to stablize the bean then it is ok to give it a name yourself and to be associated with that bean. but also in your history and information on your website or in other places if you give credit to the source or sources so that people have a way to trace it back further.

so like the new out-crosses i'm finding now in the Purple Dove, if any of those become stable and i consider them useful and good enough then i'll give them a name and give credit to RL for their known Purple Dove parentage (but i can't be sure of the father source since i do open pollination here so i can only trace maternal lines). then some future people with better resources may eventually be able to trace the full genetic lines and that would be lovely to know of all of the beans i grow now, but it is way beyond my budget.