One Plant, Many Beans: The Common Bean and Its Pot Companions

The root of the family. Dry beans of this species are toxic raw because of phytohaemagglutinin and are made safe by boiling for 30 minutes. Domesticated in Mexico, Central America and the southern Andes some 8000 years ago, it is grown today as bush and climbing forms, and India led the 28 million tonnes of dry beans produced in 2022.

A small, shiny cultivar of the common bean, also called the black turtle bean for its hard shell. It anchors Brazilian feijoada, Cuban Moros y Cristianos, Costa Rican gallo pinto and Venezuelan pabellon criollo, and is distinct from the Chinese black soybean used to make douchi.

Another common bean cultivar, named for its mottled skin like a pinto horse. It is the most widely grown bean in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, served whole in broth or mashed and fried, and goes by feijao carioca in Brazil and poroto frutilla in South America.

The same species eaten at a different moment: the young, unripe pod harvested before the seeds mature. Known as French, string or snap beans, most modern varieties are stringless, and the pod-eating practice is shared with snow peas and sugar snap peas.

A different species, Phaseolus lunatus, called the butter bean, sieva bean or Madagascar bean. Lima and butter beans are one species that cooks sometimes treat as distinct, the first small and green, the second large and yellow.

Not a Phaseolus at all but a subspecies of the cowpea, an Old World plant first domesticated in Africa. The California Blackeye is pale with a black spot, and the purple hull pea is a Southern variant with a purple or pink spot.

Vicia faba, also called the broad bean or faba bean, is a vetch and the Old World bean in this company. It is grown for people and as a cover crop, and smaller, harder seeded forms called field, tic or tick beans are bred as animal feed.

Ends the trail with a pea, Pisum sativum, dried, peeled and split along its natural division. Raw, it supplies 25 grams of protein and 26 grams of fiber per 100 grams, and it goes into dals, Iranian khoresh gheymeh, Dutch erwtensoep and pease pudding.