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Article: How's your garden bean?; Broad bean disease
- Article from:
- The Nelson Mail
- Article date:
- September 28, 2001
CopyrightCopyright 2001 The Nelson Mail. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Love them or hate them, broad beans are a spring treat that seem
to polarise people's taste buds.
Technically, broad beans, Vicia faba, are a legume growing as a
hardy annual that survives the winter cold.
Other beans like pole and bush beans, Phaseolus species, are
summer-tender annuals except runner beans, which overwinter with a
perennial root.
While Phaseolus originates from the Americas, broad beans are
thought to have come from around the eastern Mediterranean, where
they have been cultivated since Neolithic times.
The original form of this prolific supply of plant protein was
possibly a close relative of the species Vicia narbonensis that
still grows wild there and around southern ...