guavalane,

sorry I can't help with a name, but the species is phaseolus coccineus aka Runner Bean.

Here in England we grow runnerbeans mainly for their green pods. But in hotter climate areas, they are usually grown for the beauty of their flowers and for their delicious seeds.

Guava, that's a nice looking bean of a nice flat red color I haven't seen before. Hope you can reproduce it without it crossing with other runner beans, maybe have it to trade next year. Maybe an expert like Zeedman or someone in the Asian Vegetable forum can name it for you.

It looks very much like a runner bean. You might google around for pictures of the "magic beanstalk" variety - Renee's Garden sells them but doesn't have a picture of the bean itself.

I think the only way to find out what it is is to grow it and then check against types grown/used in Japan. As galina says it is Phaseolus coccineus but it looks just like a couple of dozen other runner beans so it is impossible to tell which variety it is from a picture of the seed.

Looks like my Insuk's Wang Kong

It's red, Jim, not purple.

Below is the image at: www.recipetips.com/kitchen-tips/t--818/all-about-beans.asp

Thank you for all your input. It certainly looks like the Scarlet Runner in the following link:
www.recipetips.com/kitchen-tips/t--818/all-about-beans.asp

I'm very new in growing beans, and have thoroughly enjoyed reading about Insuk's Wang Kong in this forum. They sometimes come in solid color, right? I recall all the beans in the fish market bin are bicolor. Oh, my camera color may be off, itâÂÂs not red, rather mauve.

Here's a picture of a few of the Insuk's Wang Kong beans I saved for seed this year, when they were completely dry most of them measured about an inch in length. These are the two color pattern mine produced, they're a slightly darker mauve than this picture shows.

{{gwi:1035622}}

As others have said your beans are definitely runner beans, but which variety there's quite a few. Insuk's Wang Kong's flowers are red but so are some of the other varieties, there are also runners with white flowers, some with salmon colored flowers and there's some with red and white bicolored flowers, the seed coats also come in slightly different colors, with spotted or laced patterns and some are a solid color. In any case be sure to keep us posted on how your beans on steroids do :).
Annette

I think this may be your bean:

Akahana Mame

Tcstoehr, that sure looks like it, we don't have a good view of the hilum of the seed in question. I think the hilums are different on sword and runner beans, can someone more knowledgeable chime in here.
Guavalane, could you post a picture of the hilum on your seed?

Annette

Scratch that last request, granny needs to put her glasses when looking up things LOL.

tcstoehr, thank you, thank you, thank you for the link. It sure looks like Akahana Mame 赤è±è±Â. The more I look at the picture and read the description, the more it reminds me of a desert bean we had in Taiwan.
Annette, I hope the following is a better picture of the hilum of the bean on steroid.:)
Happy, I'm using a different app so hopefully the color will come true.
A friend of mine knows several local retired nurserymen of Japanese descent. I'm thinking of leaving the beans at her office so she could show them around. Anyway, the planting time is still 5 months away.

You're welcome, Guavalane. When I saw your picture and you said it was from a Tokyo market, this bean instantly came to mind. I'm going to try a very small test planting of it this upcoming year to see how it does over here. I'm guessing it will grow quite well but productivity and flavor will have to be very good for it to end up being a "keeper".

Guava, if it were purple/mauve, it could almost be IWK, but I wanted it to be red. That is a beautiful red color in your first pic and in the Kitazawa page pic, too. I want a red bean that color!

Some of my IWKs will get a reddish tint after they have been harvested for several months,especially if there was any moisture during the storage period.