sometimes in New England. This name is a misnomer since it is properly 

 classified among the common beans P. vulgaris. It seemed desirable to have 

 a large, flat-seed horticultural bean useful for green shell and dry beans 

 that would be borne on a bush plant. Crosses of Horticultural Lima were 

 made with Bumblebee, a local variety having large, plump, white seeds with 

 a soldier-like pattern about the eye. 



From this cross, breeding lines having bush plants that yield large, flat 

 seeds of three distinctive color patterns have been purified, namely: (1) 

 solid light red; (2) red mottled; (3) light background with dark vellow 

 streaks. These lines seem rather susceptible to bean mosaic and damage 

 by leaf hoppers. At best, they are novelties and unlikely to be commercial- 

 1\ important. 



New Hampshire Giant Bean 



In the process of developing the Greencrop snapbean, a selection naving 

 flat, green, stringless pods that grew 10 to 11 inches long and still main- 

 tained good edible quality was distributed for trial under the name New 

 Hampshire Giant. After further testing, it was learned that production of 

 seed of this variety was a problem in the eastern states. The large pods 

 are attractive and of good quality and one of the seed companies in a 

 western state has been able to increase the seed and catalogue the variety. 

 While New Hampshire Giant is a fine snapbean, Greencrop can be grown 

 in most sections of the country and it seems well adapted. New Hampshire 

 Giant may be the largest podded, stringless. green, bush bean having white 

 seeds that is available in the seed trade. Its greatest appeal is to home 

 sardeners. 



Horticultural Beans 



Horticultural beans are an important commercial vegetable crop in New 

 England and they are also a favorite food grown by the home gardener. 

 The pods of some varieties may be used while immature for snapbeans, 

 but this use has been superseded mostly bv improved snapbean varieties. 

 For the most part, the crop is harvested at the green shell stage of maturitv 

 when the pods of the common commercial variety, French Horticultural, 

 and similar sorts are prettily splashed with bright carmine red against a 

 yellow background color. The pods go to market in bushel boxes. The con- 

 sumer shells out the beans by hand only to find that the attractive colors 

 are a feature of the pod and the seeds are white with occasionally a few 

 faint streaks of red. When the pods become fully mature, the dry seeds 

 may be harvested for use as baking beans and several varieties of the 

 horticultural beans are favored for this particular use. i 



Twenty years ago breeding work to develop new varieties of bush horti- ^ 

 cultural beans that had red-seed color, as well as attractive red pods, was 

 undertaken and the varieties. Flash and Brilliant, described in Station 

 Bulletin 380, were introduced. Both varieties have improved seed color. 

 Flash is a bush plant, while Brilliant has trailing vines like French Horti- 

 cultural. Newer, better ones are described in the following paragraphs. 



