Abenaki

Maturity: 100 days Climbing shelling bean. This variety comes from the Abenaki First Nations. It is part of Slow Food's Ark of Taste. The beans, once dry, are a flamboyant red which makes them resemble cranberries. White hilum. Rich Flavour. Rare variety, rediscovered by the bean collector John Withee, who obtained it from M. Taylor of Steep Falls, Maine after 11 years of research. He had read the description in an encyclopedia dating back from the 1700s. In 1981, John Withee donated his collection of 1,186 beans to the Seed Savers Exchange organization (U.S.). This variety is found in a number of catalogues from the East of New England in the 1850s, including in one from Montreal dated from 1899. It mentioned that this variety was very popular. Package: 20 seeds