Bean
a well known cultivated plant, minose. The flowers, which are fragrant, are papilionaceous, white, with violet vicia faba, of Linnæus, now called faba BEAN, a well known cultivated plant, black. The seeds are partly kidneyshaped. vulgari near the Caspian Egypt. Faba vulgaris may be primarily vulgaris is believed to be the regions The native country of faba n Sea, the Levant, and BEAR divided into the garden bean and the field bean. Of the former, there are numerous sub-varieties. The earliest is the mazagan, which is small seeded; while the largest is the windsor. The field bean runs into two leading subvarieties, a larger and a smaller one; the latter is called ticks. The horse bean is the variety equina.
The word is also applied to any leguminous plant resembling a bean, though not of the genuine genus faba.
Such, for example, as the Florida bean, which is the seed, not the fruit, of a West Indian plant. These seeds are washed up on the Florida shore, and are sometimes used as food, and sometimes they are polished and used as ornaments. The navy bean is the common white bean, used largely as an article of diet by sailors. The pea bean is a small white bean used commonly as food. The tonquin bean is the fragrant seed of a leguminous tree.
In commerce, the word is applied to the seeds of certain plants belonging to the natural order leguminosæ. The common field bean is the seed of the faba vulgaris, the broad, or windsor bean, being a cultivated variety of the same plant. The French, or haricot bean, is the seed of phaseolus multiflorus, and the scarlet runner (which is closely akin to the former), is phaseolus vulgaris.
Scarlet runners and French beans are used in the pod, in the green state, and eaten as a vegetable. Bean meal, which is more easily digested than whole beans, contains twice as much nitrogenous matter as wheat flour, and is more nutritious.