With an Eye on Color

[Pulsegleaner]

Hi All,

This thread sort of grows out of something I mentioned on the 2015 LEBN thread (or maybe it was the 2014)

In that thread, we were discussing cowpeas (or just peas, to anyone south of the Mason Dixon) and I asked if anyone knew of any ones which had an eye on their seed coats that was on top of a color that WASN'T white (say a cowpea with a black eye on a red base) I had found at least one (one of my black skinned cowpea lines turned out to have a black eye as well; you just couldn't see it unless the peas where harvested half ripe when they were just coloring up.) But I wondered if there were any named types that had it. No one could come up with any. So as far as I knew mine was the only one. Well......I think I just found another.

Yesterday among my Chinatown purchases I picked up four bags of medium sized tannish cowpeas for some of the other colors I could see in there. Mostly these other colors were the rather predicable scattering of mottled seeds in with the otherwise solid colored ones (though these mottled seeds may be a different variety in fact, I can't help noticing that they are both a slightly different size (smaller) and shape (less flattened) than the solid ones. There were also a few red white ying-yang colored ones. But the important part for this is the fact that I found two buff seeds that appear to have a red eye on top of the buff. This isn't definitive until I have planted and run then through a season. The eyes could just be discoloration in a convenient place (I've been fooled before, like when I though I had some red eyed black soybeans) But it merits investigation. Will keep posted

Oh and there may be another line to pursue. When I was removing damaged seed from the cell of my cowpea storage box that is for large to medium black skinned peas, I noticed that two of the broken rejects appear to have those odd green cotyledons I saw way back when in the black cowpeas I got from Vietnam, So it is possible that some of the sound seeds have it too (before planting them maybe I'll take a razor blade and scrape a little seed coat off to see, and mark those whose cots are green (I'd wait until they were soaked but the green is a lot weaker than it is for peas or lentils, so when they are imbibed it is hard to tell one from the other.)

 

[Ridgerunner]

Here's wishing you luck. Sometimes you just get weird things that show up for unknown reasons when you breed things that don't bred true, but occasionally you do get something to repeat. This chicken for example. She is supposed to be a black mottled but the mottling has gone wild. There should not be anywhere nearly as much white as she has. Her mother had the same thing so it breeds true but it did not show up for about three generations. I think the pattern is called Exchequer so it's not a mutation or anything like that, probably just some recessive gene that took a while to pair up.

 

[baymule]

You find the most interesting things in your Chinatown foraging trips. Be sure to post pictures of your progress!

 

[Sam BigDeer]

PG, I'm very interested to know the results of your explorations and experiments with the peas (called 'cowpeas' by the snobs)...
So I'm hoping you'll keep posting about them...
Sam

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Will do, though I'm not sure how interesting the pictures will be. I imagine the plants themselves will look quite ordinary; it's only the seed that will be at all of note. And with my rather paltry harvests, I don't tend to harvest any pods before full maturity if I can help it (I only know about the eye on the black one because a chipmunk yanked a pod off and I chased it away before it got a chance to eat it). They'll likely look much like those of the other half dozen or so cowpeas I have slated for growing this year. Maybe a bit heftier (they're what I would classify as medium to large seeded cowpeas, and those plants are often more robust than the small seeded ones I usually do)

I think I may already have an idea of why they are so uncommon, courtesy of last years work with Owl's Eye (my little cowpea with the mottled eye) . I think there are at least two traits at work which for lack of a better term I'll call the "where" and the "what". The "what" determines what the color we are working on be it white, tan, buff, red, black, mottled speckled, whatever.

The where determines where that color shows up. Normally this is "everywhere" (a solid color pattern) but it can only be in patches, resulting in the other patterns (eye, muttonchops, saddle, ying-yang, pinto and so on.) this is basically the color being "turned off" in some spots.

Since cowpeas are primarily selfers, the patterns tend to stay pretty stable. However since they CAN cross, every now and then you can get a new color combo thrown in. That's why I tend to find the mottled eye beans in a mix with two types that look sort of like the two sides of the family, beans that have a plain orange-brown eye and beans that have the mottling all over. They're probably the ancestor. My Great Owl has much the same thing, A lot of beans with plain brown eyes (or black*) a few with a flat speckly appearance**, and a tiny number with speckled eyes.

The only odd thing about the Owl's eye mix then is that the mottled eye is the DOMINANT seed type in the mix. This is probably simply a luck of the draw (if a disproportionate amount of the mottled eye seed made it into the founding population it could easily skew the ratios in favor of it, especially since it's a primarily selfing plant that makes a LOT of seed.

That also goes a long way to explaining why eyes or patterns on color bases are so rare. The "where" usually works like an on/off switch. You have the color or you don't and that bit is white. To get the pattern on a color you have to have the color switch switched to off in those zones and then have it turned on in another pathway which has to have a color gene in it too (which if the pathway is coming from the patterned one, it probably won't)

I suppose this also means that any color that can be flat on a cowpea can be an patch color too. So somewhere out there are cowpeas with blue eyes or the potential to breed them (if I find more blue eyed cowpeas). If I do come up with that one I hope I can make it a crowder as well, so I can name it 'Don't you make my Crowder's eyes Blue) If I can't then maybe "Blue eyes Smiling at Me."

* That mix has both and I think the cross happened twice once with the brown (making a speckled eye) and once with the black (making a speckled muttonchop) BOTH also have a little pinto which may come from a red and white ying yang pinto that shows up from time to time

** somewhat tellingly there are also a fair number of flat brown peas which could be the reverse cross (the brown eye suddenly expressed all over.)

 

[Pulsegleaner]

PG, I'm very interested to know the results of your explorations and experiments with the peas (called 'cowpeas' by the snobs)...
So I'm hoping you'll keep posting about them...
Sam

I don't think it' a snob thing, I think it's a division thing. If you lived up North, you'd probably call them cowpeas or Southern peas too, since "peas" would be Pisum (English peas ) A lot of cowpeas don't do well north (too long season) the same way most English peas don't do so well south (too hot). If we were Caribbean "peas" would be pigeon peas. To each their own. So lets end the bickering and give peas a chance.

 

[Sam BigDeer]

I don't think it' a snob thing, I think it's a division thing. If you lived up North, you'd probably call them cowpeas or Southern peas too, since "peas" would be Pisum (English peas ) A lot of cowpeas don't do well north (too long season) the same way most English peas don't do so well south (too hot). If we were Caribbean "peas" would be pigeon peas. To each their own. So lets end the bickering and give peas a chance.

Be careful, PG; you're letting your intelligence show with statements like those..
Sam

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Today planted the "general" peas (those for which I have enough I can direct seed and take the damage the critters will inflict, as opposed to those whose supply is small enough to necessitate one by one starting inside, which I will do when the outside ones start coming up.

5 "patches" (a patch is a small handful of seed planted together for mutual support of Owl's Eye (the small mottled eye cow pea that's become my workhorse)

1 large patch Great Owl (like Owl's eye but bigger seeds and speckles, not mottling)

1-2 patches Avakli (mottled cowpeas from Africa bought from Ricters seeds) (One patch came from packet so I assuredly pure Avakli) The other came from my seed box so it could be Avakli, other mottled skinned cow peas or a combination.)

1 patch "Gui Dou" long beans. I find these at a veggie stand in Chinatown. I call them Gui Dou (ghost beans) because of how pale they are* They aren't actually while, like Coals in the Candle (the black eyed black) is, but they are a really pale green. Seed appears to be a ying yang of white and mottled red.)

A few black cow peas planted one by one (all planted had white interiors but there are some more to test.)

And that's it, everything else is going to be one by one planting (two tone tans included) Haven't really decided which will get that treatment this year (probaby the tiny seeded black ones, the stone grey ones and maybe the blue)

*Those pale pods are actually the reason why I have no mature seed for this bean yet and have to still rely on half ripe material from veggie pods. I did get a plant of this to make a pod last year. However not realizing it WAS a ghost bean (it came out sort of short for a long bean) I though the pod was far more mature than it was (for any other cow pea, pods that color would indicate nearly ripe**) and I picked it far too early.

**With my rain patterns I usually have to harvest seed as soon as it is ripe and let it dry inside; I don't have the luxury of letting it go dry and crispy on the plant like I should.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Today planted the mass planting rice beans. Two troughs (longer than patches) a big one of red with mottling and a smaller one of white with mottling. White without mottling will be kept in reserve against crop failure. Black will be planted later, after the others have begun to come up. As ususual black will be pre soaked (like all others*) and pre sorted**

Others colors and types ("wild type"*** stubbies**** and my oh so precious pintos***** will also go in later one by one.

* All rice beans are soaked before planting, to rouge out any sleeper seed (seed that would stay underground for more than one year before germinating) I can never remember which side I gave to each color from year to year, and so to keep colors as pure as possible, I have to make sure there is no reserve in the ground when I start.

** "Black" actually covers at least four different colors each of which gets treated differently; Dark red (discarded like all pure reds) red with an extreme amount of black mottling (planted with the rest of the black mottled red) brown (planted in it's own patch) and blue (planted in it's own patch). Hopefully one of these years I'll get some blue back (blue usually only appears in the probably "wrong" rice beans so it is entirely possible that they are too long season for here.

*** A grouping of smaller usually tan with heavy mottling rice beans I extracted from some senna a while back which are probably closer to the wild type than most. I usually avoid working with them since they probably have a LOT of the shattering trait (and could spread it through the rest of the stuff) but if the crop is as bad this year as it was last year, I may have little choice

**** extra short and fat seed, being kept on the chance it is a rice bean/adzuki hybrid

***** As pinto by and large ONLY appear in the "wrong" stuff (and are pretty damn rare even there) they may again be impossible to reproduce here.