Bean, Di Spagna A Grano Bicolore - Red Runner Bean

Di Spagna A Grano Bicolore Late Shelling Pole Bean  Red Runner Bean.  Good producer of green pods with brown mottled beans.    Stunning red blossoms and a great runner bean.  AKA Red Runner Bean.  A pole bean that grows 7-8 feet. Good production of fresh shell or dry beans. Produces green flat pods 5-9 inches long with 5-6 huge multicolored seeds. Makes great soup or the perfect contorno. If you pick them small (five inches or so) before they swell up, you can eat them whole as a green bean. Excellent flavor. 80 days for full size.

The red runner shelling bean plant produces large, stringless pods that are slightly curved into a classic bean shape. Pods are thick skinned, slightly fuzzy, and vibrant green. The pods house striking, large, kidney-shaped seeds or beans. The seeds are known for their vibrant colors and depending upon type will be varying shades of pink, purple, and lavender, often with spots and speckles of contrasting color. The beans require a longer cooking time than typical shelling beans due to their size, and the skins are substantially heartier. Once cooked the beans have a starchy to creamy texture with a savory, very nutty, almost meaty flavor. The blooms of the red runner bean are large, clustered, and most often scarlet red though some types may be white, pink or multi-colored. In addition to the seeds of the bean pods the flowers are also edible and offer a mild, bean flavor.

Red runner shelling beans, botanically classified as part of Phaseolus coccineus, are an open-pollinated runner bean and member of the Fabaceae family. Unlike common beans, the plant is a perennial vine with tuberous roots, though not typically treated as such within agricultural methods and cycles. There are nearly twenty different cultivars (man-made types) of Scarlet runner bean, and all are known for the colorful seeds the pods produce. True to their name they are first and foremosr bright scarlet blooms, so much that in most seed catalogs they are listed under “ornamental”, “flowers”, or “hummingbird plants” rather than “beans.” Today the Scarlet Red runner is mainly grown as an ornamental in the United States though it is available when in season from local farmers markets. In Europe runner types such as the Scarlet have long been a popular edible bean both whole in their immature form and when mature and shelled for their edible seeds.

Pole beans have approximately 1 seed per gram.