Plant · P-231

Runner Bean

Phaseolus coccineus

Runner Bean is a vigorous climbing legume from the Mesoamerican highlands with more edible parts than most beans: raw or cooked immature pods, mature seed after a soak and a hard boil, scarlet flowers that taste of bean and go into salads, young leaves as a cooked green, and even a starchy edible root worth trying as a second crop from one planting. Its highland origin makes it cool-weather-loving rather than heat-loving - during a hot summer it keeps blooming heavily and drawing hummingbirds, but sets very little pod, then produces a real harvest again once temperatures ease in fall. It fixes nitrogen through root nodules like the rest of its family. Raw mature seed is toxic in quantity and must be hard-boiled before eating.