Green beans from Chinese red noodle seeds

9 years ago

I bought a package of Chinese Red Noodle yardlong beans, and they're just starting to produce. The first one had yellow flowers (or at least, I remember the bean growing out of what looked like a little yellow bag - not sure what the technical term is.) The bean was green and grew to ~18 inches long before I picked it. At that point, the seeds were swelling inside the pod, and the bean was kinda spongy, so probably past it's prime. Two other plants produced purple flowers today, so I think they're probably the right seeds. Any idea what the first plant is? How common is it to get off-type seeds in a commercially sold pack? Thanks.

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Comments (3)

mav72
9 years ago
I'm growing unnamed long beans right now and they have dull yellowish green flowers.. I'm also growing black eyed peas which are cowpeas and are the same species of plant as long beans. The leaves and flowers are identical but the black eyed peas are a bush variety... So it would be difficult to know the variety of the first plant amongst long beans. If you dry some seed from that plant, you might get a clue on what's goin on, OR you may not. I'm a little confused with mine because my seeds are black if left to completely dry in the pod but if you pull the seeds from the dried pod early, the seeds turn out a brick red. I don't know what process is going on there.

I've never grown the red variety before so I can't coment on the flower.

Seed can and do get mixed up, weather it be physically or genetically. I bought some moon shadow hyacinth beans a couple of years ago and had some purple leaved variety beans mixed in. As a kid, I remember planting a white lima bean and the beans the plant produced looked like Christmas limas... So mixups can happen...
garden_gal_fl (z10)
9 years ago
The purple podded yardlong beans have purple blossoms, and the seeds are sometimes similar in color. It is possible that you had a few of these.
zeedman Zone 5 Wisconsin
9 years ago
The purple podded long beans have solid reddish-brown seeds. Unfortunately, there are also green podded varieties that have the same seed coat color, so there is no way to tell them apart just by looking at the seed.

As Mav72 mentioned, getting seed from commercial vendors that is not true-to-type is not uncommon. This could be caused by crossing which occurred due to inadequate isolation procedures, or by mixing or mislabeling of seed. IMO, this has become more commonplace as small seed operations have flourished... but even the older, established seed companies have occasional problems.

The company selling the seeds may have purchased them from a grower, or they could have grown the seed themselves. In either case, you should contact them to let them know of the problem, so that they can stop selling that batch of seed. Chances are they will either refund the price of the seed, or send you good seed from another batch.