Annette, was the soil the same in both plantings? It looks like pink and blue hydrangeas.

Happy, both were grown in Sunshine mix #4 with some Sea Soil(composted fish and forest fines) dug in. It's a puzzle.

Annette, in the warm summer of 2009 a lot of my borlotto stregonta shellies were mostly the color of dark chocolate instead of the usual pinto color. In other words, the colors were reversed. (Alas, they still tasted like frijoles.) So I saved the seed separately and called them borlotto chocolate. This summer I planted a separate trellis of them right beside the trellis of regular stregonta.

Almost all the beans from both trellises came out the usual pinto color with maybe half a dozen seeds of the chocolate version. In this case it seems to be environmental. - Dick

Dick you just might have nailed it, if they had mutated most likely there would have been just a few changing color, not all of them.

I grew these beans within 10 feet of each other isolated from the rest of my garden so there is not much chance of them crossing with anything else, the violet colored ones were grown in a half barrel up against the side of our house so would have been in a sightly warmer spot.

In all the time I've grown this bean I've never seen such a variation in color before they have always looked the same, reddish on beige. I'll almost be disappointed if they revert back to their original color, the spots and swirls were really pretty, electric violet when first shelled darkening some when completely dry. I should add the pods on both these plantings were identical no changes there.

This little area in my garden is quite protected and is where I grow beans I want to save the most seed from. Next year I was going to grow Tennessee Cutshorts here but think I'll grow these ones here again and see what they do.
Annette

am- I will look for your part 1 post, but are these bush or pole beans, can you eat the pods or are they just for dried beans? They seem to resemble these beans-

Here is a link that might be useful: Bingo Italian pole

Hemnancy, they're pole beans the pods are not as flat as Uncle Steve's but the pod color is almost identical, maybe a bit more purple on Uncle Steve's. I've only eaten them as snap beans. The link below is from the first post on these beans.
Annette

Here is a link that might be useful: My Italian Beans

Hemnancy, the Bingo bean is described as a big creamy green pod, borlotto type, looks like a big flat, what I call ribbon type. Annette's Italians are a darkish green pencil pod J curved pole bean.

Though the seed color pattern is similar, well spotted!