the.com/runner bean
A bean so ambitious it climbs before it eats, flowers before it fruits.
means A climbing bean plant grown for its long green pods and (in some varieties) its showy red or white flowers, popular in British kitchen gardens.
from Named simply for its habit of 'running' — scrambling and twining rapidly up poles, strings, and anything else vertical — rather than for any connection to speed afoot. It's a New World native (related to the common bean's wider family), brought to Europe after contact with the Americas, and for a long time grown as much for its scarlet flowers as its pods, before gardeners properly caught on to eating it.
- growth style
- Climbs via twining stems, not tendrils
- origin
- Native to Central American mountains, not Britain
- flowers
- Red blooms once grown purely for ornament
- perennial secret
- Roots can survive winter and resprout