2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[meadow]

How long are those pods on MN-150?

 

[Blue-Jay]

ask Paul D the right way to pronounce Berea lol

I will ask Paul the right way to pronounce Berea. I'll take a stab at it right now. My guess would be that it's pronounced Brea ! Did I get it close?

 

[jbosmith]

How long are those pods on MN-150?

They vary some. Maybe 8-10 inches on average? Some of them have ~15 seeds in them which is pretty nice!

 

[Triffid]

You may certainly give Janice my email address. I will be very interested in having a conversation about Kentucky beans with her. A million Kudos to you for such great dective work.

Thank you, Russ! Janice is currently on vacation so I'll drop her a line next week.

Hello @Greasy and a great big Kentucky Heirloom bean welcome to you. I wonder if the Bill Best and family in Barea would know anything about these Sallee Dunahoo beans and were the family lived in Kentucky.

Just to clarify, barring one great great great grandfather who had land in Pulaski County, the Sallee and Dunnahoo families are from the desert Southwest and have no connection to the bean. The Napier and Combs families were/are the Kentuckians and bean custodians.

The beans I got were labelled 'Dunahoo' with one n, so I having been mixing Dunahoo/Dunnahoo in this conversation, but the latter is how the family name is spelled.

What Janice said to me about sending the Napier-Combs beans to Marshall:

"- the Marshall person you referred to, to my memory was just a Facebook friend for a short while. I remember him having gardens and asking if I could send him some seeds from the Appalachian area, as I was leaving on a trip at that time to go see family. If memory serves me I sent him a few of my family’s heirloom greasy bean seeds, then stopped at an Amish village in that area and bought several different varieties from them, which were all labeled. I believe he grew gardens from those I sent, but I do not know if he kept them separate or anything more beyond that. For some reason I think he was affiliated with the Baker Creek Seed Company, but I am not sure of that. I lost contact with him many years ago -"

I recently learned that there are a lot of Napiers from the Lothians, where my grandmother was born. Small world.

 

[Triffid]

@jbosmith those are really quite beautiful! Are the seeds burgundy too?

 

[meadow]

They vary some. Maybe 8-10 inches on average? Some of them have ~15 seeds in them which is pretty nice!
View attachment 52058

Wow, what a haul! (eta: thank you for measuring!!!)

 

[meadow]

@Greasy Just to clarify, my Sallee family wasn't in Pulaski County either. I hope that my post didn't give the impression that the bean had anything to do with your region of interest.

 

[meadow]

Awhile back there was some discussion about an unnamed black cowpea that @Zeedman had grown out. He'd gotten them from @Bluejay77. Have they ever been named?

Have you seen this one on the Sandhill site? (I'm not suggesting that it might be the same cowpea.. just that it has a short DTM and is "extremely productive"):

Cow- 70 days- 9 inch pods that have 20 or more black seeds per pod on extremely productive plants that produce multiple crops. The most productive cowpea I have ever grown. This was in Tom’s collection with no documentation other than the word Cow written on the packet

 

[Zeedman]

Awhile back there was some discussion about an unnamed black cowpea that @Zeedman had grown out. He'd gotten them from @Bluejay77. Have they ever been named?

Have you seen this one on the Sandhill site? (I'm not suggesting that it might be the same cowpea.. just that it has a short DTM and is "extremely productive"):

In my research through SSE Yearbooks, the description of "Cow" most closely matches my observations of the black-seeded cowpea. But given that @Bluejay77 does not have source info, it is impossible to trace the seeds provenance further back. I hesitate to give it a new name, but am equally hesitant to just call it "Cow" & risk contaminating the original if the two are not in fact identical. I wish this could be resolved, because IMO this is a spectacular cowpea that I would like to share widely.

 

[jbosmith]

In my research through SSE Yearbooks, the description of "Cow" most closely matches my observations of the black-seeded cowpea. But given that @Bluejay77 does not have source info, it is impossible to trace the seeds provenance further back. I hesitate to give it a new name, but am equally hesitant to just call it "Cow" & risk contaminating the original if the two are not in fact identical. I wish this could be resolved, because IMO this is a spectacular cowpea that I would like to share widely.

I vote we dub it 'Wicked Awesome Mini Moo' (WAMM for short).

I should do more plant breeding. I like naming things.