144 Agricultural Experiment Station^ Ithaca, N. Y. 



This is the Lima bean of American horticultural literature. We 

 may distinguish two leading types : 



1. Potato Limas, characterized by tumid or nearly spherical beans. 



Dwarf. — Thorburn, Kuraerle or Dreer. 



2. Flat or large Limas, with very large and flat veiny seeds, a tall 

 growth and late maturity. 



Dwarf. — Burpee. 



11. Phaseolus tmdtiforus., Willd. (Sp. PI. iii. 1030). P. coccineus, 

 Lam. Encyc. iii. 70, not of Linnteus. Scarlet Rnnner, Painted 

 Lady, White Dutch Runner, and Spanish beans. 

 Dwarf. — Barteldes. 



The above classification accounts for all the so-called dwarf 

 Limas, seven in number, with which I have met. It will aid us to 

 understand the subject if we briefly stretch the history and 

 distinguishing marks of these various types. 



I. The Sieva or Carolina bean is a small and slender grower 

 as compared with the large Limas, early and hardy, truly annual, 

 with thin short and broad (ovate-pointed) leaflets, numerous, 

 emalf papery pods which are much curved on the back and pro- 

 vided with a long upward point or tip and which split open and 

 twist when ripe, discharging the seeds ; beans small and flat, white, 

 brown or variously marked with red. The beans are shown at 

 Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in Fig. 21, and the foliage and pods on the 

 cover illustration and in Figs. 25 and 26. This type is always 

 distinguishable from the large Limas with the greatest ease, and is 

 really as distinct from tliat type as Phaseolus multifloinis is. I am 

 inclined to believe that it will eventually be discovered to have had 

 a difl^erent specific origin from the Limas. Always smaller than the 

 true Limas, it also has a well-known tendency to vary into small or 

 bush forms, as in the Dwarf Carolina, a half dwarf which has been 

 well known for many years, and this tendency is apparently much 

 more strongly developed than in the Limas. 



Li unpens believed that this bean came from Bengal, but it is now 

 understood to be South American, although it is not certainly 

 known in a wild state. It was early known in North America. 

 Lawson, in his voyage to Carolina in 1700-8, mentions Bushel 

 Beans as a spontaneous kind. Gay and Trumbull* guess that this 

 may have been a form of Phaseolus multiflorus, or Scarlet Runner, 



* Amer. Journ. Sci. xxvi, 133. 



