18 BULLETIN 119, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
DESCRIPTION. 
The mung is an erect or suberect, rather hairy, much-branched 
plant, growing to a height of 1 to 4 feet, depending on variety. Some 
sorts twine more or less at the tips of the stems and branches. In a 
general way the plants are intermediate in habit between the cowpea 
and the soy bean. The leaves are trifoliate, with rather large, ovate, 
entire or rarely trilobed leaflets. The flowers are pale yellow, crowded 
in clusters of 10 to 25. They are fully self-fertile, when bagged setting 
pods: perfectly. 
The adaptations of the plant are almost identical with those of the 
cowpea, and the methods of culture quite the same. 
VARIETIES. 
The varieties of the mung are numerous, about 20 having been 
introduced and tested during the past 10 years. They differ in habit, 
size, period of maturity, color of pods, and size and color of seeds. 
In habit most varieties are erect or suberect, but in some the tips 
of the branches are vining. Most kinds grow to a height of about 2 
feet, but early sorts are only 1 foot high and very late kinds 3 to 5 
feet. The earliest mature their first crop of pods at Arlington farm 
in about 80 days, while the latest barely ripen seed when Killed by 
frost in 140 days. The pods are black or brownish and vary in length 
from 2.5 to 4 inches, each containing 10 to 14 seeds. The seeds are 
globose or oblong, green in most varieties, but in others marbled 
black and green, yellow, brown, and purple-brown. The weight of 
100 seeds ranges from 1.5 to 4.2 grams. Theseed coat is marked by 
innumerable fine wavy ridges, which are sometimes very faint, but 
apparently never entirely lacking. Sometimes nearly smooth seeds 
are found in the same pod with others strongly striate. The seeds of 
Phaseolus sublobatus are similarly striate, but those of the urd are 
smooth. 
EARLY INTRODUCTION. 
The mung bean was known in the United States previous to 1835, 
in which year the following article was published (Herbemont, 1835): 
CHICKASAW PEA—PEA FODDER. 
Cotumsria, S. C., May 11, 1835. 
To the Editor of the Farmers’ Register: 
I send you here enclosed a few of the peas mentioned in your last number [page 752, 
Vol. II], as a dark bottle green pea, the smallest of the tribe. I prefer it to all others 
for fodder. Not being a running vine, but rather a bush, it is much more manageable 
than the common cow pea. My horses prefer it to all other fodder, and when they 
have it, never leave a bit, eating it all to the oldest and dryest stalk. The best prac- 
tice in curing pea vines here, is not to let them remain as long in the sun as your cor- 
respondent J. M. G. intimates is necessary; but they are cut one day and housed the 
next, taking care not to let them be packed too close, but kept open by poles or rails 
being put here and there between them, and kept so for three or four weeks, when the 
