A new species!

I think i have it - a pod of cross-bred beans! a cross between my brown beans and red beans. the result is yellowish beans in the shape of brown beans but size of red beans.

it was just a casual experiment, not expecting it to work. i took the stamens from a fallen red bean flower and rubbed the pollen on the opening of a half-open flower on a brown bean plant. then i forgot all about what i did until today.



similar to my gen2 green beans, i harvested at the same time 3 pods with exceptionally many beans inside. and only when i compared these 3 pods and opened them up did i realise 1 of them is so different from normal. the 2 normal pods had 8 and 9 beans, while the crossbred pod contained 14, a record high among my history of bean plants.

later i opened another pod and also found that i had this cross breed. it must have been polinated by flying pollen from that experiment. it was quite nearby to that flower, and harvested at around the same time, so it makes sense.


im quite certain that these yellow beans are not just variations of brown beans though brown beans may vary in skin color between beige and brown and slightly vary in shape. - not only the beans were different, the pod also looked different.
- the packet of brown beans i bought had none which were yellow or of that size.
- all the other brown beans collected from my own plants were also within range of the packet's.
- made possible by that experimental act.

the very obvious difference can be seen here, even when the pic is unclear. the crossbreed, with red beans on left, brown beans on right. this is so interesting. i wonder what it will grow to be like. just like cross-racial people tend to have better physical features, i look forward to a generation even better than their parents. i shall plant them soon.

As an update, my gen1 red bean plants have all shed their leaves, but 1 of them grew back a few new sets. no more upcoming fruits at the moment. some of my brown bean plants have already died, and few leaves are left on the surviving. there are still fruits on the way, though. the champion plant now seems to be the main source of living vine. it has bore about 5 pods so far.

gen 2 plants are growing fine. there are 11 brown bean and 6 red bean plants, just like gen1. 1 of the brown bean is dying, though. for some unknown reason. i hope the successive generations dont get weaker and lousier like what happened to my green beans.