Plant

Common bean

Phaseolus vulgaris

Also known as: Phaseolus vulgaris, kidney bean, pinto bean, black bean, navy bean

The most widely consumed grain legume in the world — a single species (*Phaseolus vulgaris*) whose hundreds of cultivars include the kidney, pinto, black, navy, cranberry, and white beans of global cuisines. Independently domesticated in Mesoamerica and the Andes ~8,000 years ago; one of the Three Sisters in Indigenous American polyculture (alongside [[maize]] and squash). The nitrogen-fixing root symbiosis lets the bean give back to the soil that grows it.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons — see source for license.

Scientific

Phaseolus vulgaris exhibits dramatic morphological variation across its thousands of cultivars — climbing pole-bean forms and bush forms, large kidney-shaped seeds and small navy seeds, blacks and whites and pintos and reds. All are the same species; the variation reflects centuries of regional selection.

The species fixes atmospheric nitrogen through symbiotic [[rhizobia-inoculant|Rhizobium]] bacteria in root nodules — the agronomic basis for [[three-sisters|the Three Sisters]] polyculture, in which corn (a nitrogen-hungry grass) is interplanted with beans (a nitrogen-fixer) and squash (a ground-covering moisture-conserver).

Cultural and historical

Pre-Columbian American agricultural systems were built on [[three-sisters|the Three Sisters]]: maize provided the structural climbing pole for beans, beans fixed nitrogen, squash shaded the ground and suppressed weeds. The three together were nutritionally complete in a way no one of them was alone. The system spread north along the eastern seaboard to the Iroquois Confederacy and across to the desert Southwest’s Pueblo agriculture.

Post-Columbian dispersal carried Phaseolus vulgaris to Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, where it became central to cuisines from Brazilian feijoada to Italian minestrone to Mexican frijoles to Tuscan ribollita.

Global production

Top producers: Myanmar, India, Brazil, USA, China.

Sources

FAO Crop Statistics
Wikipedia — Common bean

A plant entry in the 0mn1.one [[directory]].

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Scientific

substrate of

Mesoamerica common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) was domesticated independently in both Mesoamerica and the Andes; the Mesoamerican lineage is the parent of most modern cultivars

shares approach with

Mung bean fellow grain legume; mung is Vigna, common bean is Phaseolus — both nitrogen-fixing pulses

cousin of

Peanut Fabaceae kin and South American Indigenous domesticates — both originated in the Andean-and-Amazonian range; both spread globally via the Columbian Exchange.

Practical

produces

Cultural

shares approach with

Fava bean auto-linked from body mention

General

shares approach with

Lentil auto-linked via shared tag: domesticated
Maize auto-linked via shared tag: domesticated
Potato auto-linked via shared tag: andes
Soybean auto-linked via shared tag: domesticated
Squash third member of the Three Sisters intercrop

17 inbound links · 7 outbound

Scientific

Cultural and historical

Global production

See also

Sources

What links here, and how