Cross pollinating beans

[Jayb]

I wonder how often French beans cross pollinate and if some varieties are more prone than others?

I noticed three varieties of climbing bean I grew this year produced some not true to type. I'm looking forward to growing out the crosses (space permitting) and seeing how they develop as they progress F2 F3 etc It will be a real bonus if I find one good enough to keep as a variety. 

I grew some darker coloured Papa de Role separately as a few seeds were a different colour but not like they were reverse bean. The original looking seed all produced true to type, but the darker cropped a totally different bean.

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Anasazi bean is usually listed as a bush but I was excited to get a pole variety. Interestingly the seed I bought produced three sorts of seed, a very few were true to original seed sown, top left. Another is very prettily marked white and red seed and the other black seed. All the vines grew similarly and the resulting shelly beans were very good to eat. I never got around to trying them as a green bean though.

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I found a couple of my Rose Family bean shown on the left hand side, (thank you for the beans Galina),

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produced an earlier bean with black, slightly mottled seed. They matured at a faster rate than the true to type Rose Family. I'm hoping some of next years grow outs combine the colouration of Rose with earlier harvesting.

Be interesting to hear about other beans people have on the go.

[Jayb]

[okra]

Seed saving is so much fun and can saves you loads of money

[aj]

I've got a few rogues on the go from last year and this:

Pintos

My shop bought pintos produced 3 varieties. One black, one speckled and one true to type. I sent some of the rogues to a chum who grew them out and only got a pure white variety. Mine produced the black, speckled AND white. I was a little amazed that ALL hers were white....when they were taken from the exact same bag as mine. My speckled ones were about 3 different patterns but all the same colours - will be interesting to see what grows as what next year.

Anasazi.

Not sure where your original seeds were from [possibly the same place as mine] but this year we also got about 6 plants that were climbers not dwarfs; these were ones grown at one of my schools whilst mine were all dwarf - again all from the same bag, same compost etc - just different final position.

Many of mine produce the opposite rogues; and some produced just random speckled like those in your pic. I think these are just confused and until they all grow out over a couple of generations they are just all unstable.

One day I'm just going to throw all the non true to types in a 'dwarf' or 'climber' bag and be done with it! It can be a bit annoying to keep them all separate and they all cross and give you random results.....

[angle shades]

 :) my Cherokee TOT had red flowers this year ::) so will start again with fresh seed next year/ shades x

[galina]

It happens, more so in recent years.  I put it down to our large earth wasp population.  Wasps can bite into French Bean flowers.  But it happens increasingly to other gardeners as well.  A blossom bag placed around a flower truss would stop crossing and French beans self pollinate very well inside a bag made out of net curtain material.

However 'funny' beans can be easily rogued out, because their seed patterns are so different, it is not a great problem.  When beans get crossed, the resulting seeds look just like the normal seeds.  But they in turn produce different plants with different looking seeds.  The F1 seed looks just like the maternal variety, because seed coat is made from maternal material, only the germ inside is crossed and will produce the start of a new variety (if you let it).  The blackish seeded Rose variety you got JayB did not cross at your place, they were crossed at mine, but I did not know about it, because the seeds I gave you looked right.

Your Anasazi top left look like the ordinary type, the ones top right look inversed (most likely) and should grow into regular Anasazi again.  The black seeds at the bottom are most likely a cross.  There are tall growing Anasazi types.  Was it the black seeded ones that grew tall plants?

Shades, red flowers in French Beans are usually an indication of a cross with a runner bean.  Now that is rarer than French to French beans crossing and in the first few generations the yield is quite low.  I have followed up one of these crosses for several years.  Great fun, but initially extremely low yielding.  I now have a very unstable French bean type from my cross, that produces huge flower trusses with lots of beans very late in the year.  However the plants are much tougher than French beans and stand up well to autumn gales. 

[chriscross1966]

I'll be starting an experiment with what is either a crossed Egyptian pea-bean or a melanic-seeded sport. Given that there was nothing else to really tell that they would be balck seeded except pod colour (the plants looked identical) then I've got my fingers crossed for a sport.... the beans don't look like either of the other two black-seeded varieties (and neither did the plant, my first thought was I might have planted a Cherokee Trail of TEars in amongst them but the growth didn't look the same)..... that said ther are plenty of black-seeded varieties for someone who gave me the seeds to have been growing next to the pea-beans the previous year.... I'll keep them at home, no other french-types near them to interfere....

chrisc

[Bugloss2009]

i had a cross between a pea bean and a borlotti a few years back, and i've grown them on.  There were originally 3 distinct looking seed types, which i grew on separately. This is now the 3rd year of harvesting the crossed beans and they seem to have settled down to produce 2 beans - a big fat round pink-red seed, and a big black haricot shaped bean. The pods still retain some of the stripes of the borlotti, and the knuckleduster shape of the pea bean pod

interestingly a couple of pods this year had seeds that were exactly the same as the original two-tone pea bean seeds. i haven't grown them for a couple of years, and nobody else on the site does either. i guess that's the bean equivalent of explaining how Prince Harry's hair is the colour it is( though it probably isn't  :o )

[Robert_Brenchley]

Harry looks like a perfect example of an outcross; maybe he should be self-pollinated to see what comes out in the wash?

[Bugloss2009]

is "outcross" a nice way of saying something else? "don't let the outcrosses grind you down"?  :o

[pumkinlover]

is "outcross" a nice way of saying something else? "don't let the outcrosses grind you down"?  :o

What about the "self pollinators"? :-X

[Bugloss2009]

 ;D

there's a lot of them about, too

[Robert_Brenchley]

He didn't come true to type, that much is certain!

[Bugloss2009]

He didn't come true to type, that much is certain!

well he certainly shouldn't be allowed to do any pollinating - we could end up with a whole dynasty of Mick Hucknalls (for instance, possibly) and that would be ghastly.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Rogue him out and have done, in that case.

[Jayb]

Aj, your pintos sound interesting, sounds like you have the knack of dividing beans  ;D  I wonder if the whites will remain so?

I love the sound of red flowering Cherokee TOT, more so with Galina's explanation, if you still have any spare I'd love to give a few a whirl

Galina I have to admit to being easily swayed by shiny seeds so having rouges with the thought of something new excites me.  I loved growing Rose plus the added bonus.

With Anasazi, I wondered about inversed seeds but so many? 3/5 inversed, 2/5ths black with a few as original. I bought Anasazi as climbers, which they all did, just different coloured beans! All the vines were tall, uniform in growth and habit, I was surprised with this one to see variation in the seed.

Sounding good chrisc, look forward to hearing how you get on with them.

Lol you lot  ;D