Mei Lin's Chinese Long Bean

Strongly climbing, early maturing yardlong with dark green foliage. Fresh pods are nutty and crunchy, and the donor notes they are best harvested between 6–12" long. Fully mature pods measure 17–25" long, 0.2-0.4" wide, and hang pendant. Two pods per peduncle. Number of seeds per pod varies from 8 to 17. Vigorous and eye-catching! High productivity when grown at Heritage Farm in 2025. Janette Pettus of Solon, Iowa, has been stewarding this variety since 2006 from seed she received from Mei Lin Zhang, a Chinese co-worker in the Physiology Department at the University of Iowa. Mei Lin had been growing the variety in Iowa City, IA, since the mid-1990s from seed she got from her mother, who brought it from mainland China on a visit to Iowa. Mei Lin and her husband came to America as graduate students in the early 1990s, eventually becoming professors and US citizens. Jan and Mei Lin saw each other almost daily in the department’s break room for lunch and soon discovered they both shared a special interest in gardening. “It was something we could visit and chat about while eating lunch,” Jan recalls. “We exchanged vegetables from our gardens, and seeds, and ideas, and those kinds of things. (…) Mei Lin gave me seeds from this long bean that was very special to her because it had been in her family in China for generations.” Jan donated this bean variety to SSE in 2021.