Cousin Oliver's climbing French bean

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Not sure if this will work, but I thought it might be useful to start a thread for Cousin Oliver's and copy over the info from here

Cousin Oliver's

This is a family bean from Purvis Mississippi in the USA. A friend of my donor named this bean after her Cousin, Oliver Cameron. Although this bean hails from the South of the USA, it is growing very well in Britain.

There are purple flowers followed by lots of beans in bunches of 7 or 8 medium length slender pods. Green with purple striping. Very nice as green beans. With string. Prolific. Also good for dry seed. Enough seeds for the seed circle


Tried to upload a picture of the pods and it tells me that the file is corrupted - It isn't! This does happen quite a lot. I will fetch another photo and try again.

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Just as well I have taken several pictures of Cousin Oliver's. This photo shows the beans growing in bunches of 7 or 8 - a bit like Mechelse Tros.

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Comment by Jayb

#15.1

jayb commented
[COLOR=#6A6A6A !important]10-11-2014, 09:27

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I grew Cousin Oliver's a couple of years ago, lovely bean and cropped well here too. They came from a swap, I'm guessing now from you! Quite fun to go full circle as I've added some to a4a swap parcel. Good to have a history for them too.

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#15.2

Galina commented
[COLOR=#6A6A6A !important]10-11-2014, 10:59

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That would have been from my 2009 grow-out of this bean. Yes it is most likely that you had them from me, because this is a family bean and has never been commercially available anywhere. Or from me via somebody else

I got seeds for this variety from Sharon Vadas in Colorado, who got it from a friend from her church Barbara Parker, whose cousin is Oliver Cameron. Barbara named the bean when she gave them to Sharon - they were previously just known as 'beans' in the Cameron household although, who knows, it could be a recognised variety. Does well in the Deep South of the USA, does well in the high altitude drylands of Colorado, does well here and also in Wales. There are some beans that are brilliant wherever they are grown. This is one of them it seems.

What makes this bean quite fascinating (apart from doing well) is that there are long trusses with lots of beans of each truss. Only Mechelse Tros has similar trusses (from the beans I know). The bean equivalent of centiflor tomatoes.
Last edited by Galina; 13-11-2014, 09:43.

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#15.3

jayb commented
[COLOR=#6A6A6A !important]16-11-2014, 09:46

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I'm afraid I didn't register the long trusses, but will be sure and take more notice next time around. I'll be growing this one again!

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#16
[COLOR=#6A6A6A !important]18-11-2014, 09:50


Following on from the Cousin Oliver's post above. I tried to send this as a comment, but comments can only be 1000 characters long.

Just came across this:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/429885/#b

suggesting that Cousin Oliver's might be Rattlesnake. I don't have a subscription to DG, so can't access the whole discussion. Well - having grown Rattlesnake, I would have said the beans are larger than CO and don't grow in the striking bunches. But I am writing from memory here and haven't grown Rattlesnake for a few years. Last year I got RS seeds from a different source as a freebie and those seeds look a bit different to my RS seeds to boot. Both look a little different to CO, but are clearly the same general type. We will see what happens next year with both batches of RS.. I have taken quite a few photos of CO this year to allow for good comparisons.

Do either of you, Silverleaf and Jayb, know Rattlesnake beans?

One possibility might be that Rattlesnake (like Gardener's Delight tomato and Blue Lake bean) has become a genetically fairly wide based landrace (old definition of landrace) due to their popularity and seed trade re-selections. Therefore different strains can be quite different by now due to genetic drift, that they have actually become different, albeit closely related, varieties..



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Possibly the clearest photo of a truss (should have taken one specifically). There are 5 developed beans on this truss and the tip is still flowering and producing more beans later:

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Silverleaf
Finding My Feet
Join Date: Aug 2014
Posts: 13
6

I've heard of rattlesnake beans but I don't really know anything about them.





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#16.1

jayb commented
[COLOR=#6A6A6A !important]Yesterday, 21:06

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Interesting? I've grown them but not for 4 or 5 years, so not really fresh in my mind! I've only a small pack of seeds saved to compare with Cousin Oliver's, they do look very similar if not the same in appearance, but identical looking seeds don't always grow the same type plants! The Rattlesnakes I have came via Jeannine.

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#16.2

jayb commented
[COLOR=#6A6A6A !important]Yesterday, 21:31

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A couple more Cousin Oliver's threads;

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/412550/#b
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/412310/