Mereville di Piemont (Wonder of Piedmont
) Bean
(Phaseolus vulgaris)
It is said that the world is divided into people who lump and people who split. Perhaps the biggest splitter of all times was my fellow Swede Carl Linnaeus. In the 1700s he took liberties with Latin and carved up the plant world into orders, genera and species. When he encountered the bean clan, however, he seems to have lost interest in splitting and joined the lumpers. He poured all New World
beans into a single stock pot and gave them the inelegant name “Phaseolus vulgaris”. Perhaps he hoped that future plantsmen and plantswomen would sort out this large and diverse group but, alas, we have made a muck of it.
Even in Linnaeus’ time New World
beans were known to have many different habits and appearances. They were also known to have come from several points in South America
. Today we know from comparative molecular studies and archeological work that at least six distinct strains of wild South America
beans were the founding plants for all New World
beans. Human selection and cultivation by native farmers created the stable landraces which were carried back to Europe
in the 1500s. These strains of beans were crossed and re-crossed countless times as bean agriculture ascended to an important food source in the European diet.
Today we enjoy the genetic inheritance of hundreds of New World
bean varieties and more appear each year. But our scientific nomenclature doesn’t help us break down this large and diverse group into manageable or consistent subgroups. We also labor under an unusually large number of overlapping names for the same bean. This situation makes bean scholarship a touch tiresome and bean picking almost exciting.
The story of Mereville di Piemont beans illustrate some of these points: Mereville is a very old New World
bean that is scientifically classified as one of many “ Phaseolus vulgaris.” If you dig deeper into its many descriptions you will encounter terms that sort it into non-Linnaean groupings. For example you will find it described as “wax,” “pole,” “French horticulture,” “Roma” and so forth. These terms are common in gardening literature but they are more lingo than scientific. Another difficulty is that Mereville has at least three different names depending upon whether you are Italian, French or English. And if you thirst for even more trouble you’ll find that some sources claim that Mereville is identical to another old bean called “Dragon’s Tongue” which has more than sixteen synonyms in gardening literature.
All of these stories and names converge in agreement to describe a flat bean having a cream-colored or pale yellow background with playful purple striping resembling a tongue or a lick of fire. The purple highlights vanish as they are cooked which is a characteristic of the purple-colored anthrocyanin compounds in many vegetables. Mereville is a very old bean with a long history of cultivation in Italy
. Italy
may not be its country of origin however. Some say France
while others claim the Netherlands
. Still, it is in Italy that Mereville has worked its way into culinary lore as a lovely, flavorful and tender bean that isn’t quite as “meaty” as many Roma varieties.
Whoops! )&(**)_) Did I say “Roma?” Where is Linnaeus when we need him?
These Mereville di Piemont beans were grown organically in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.
Seed Source: Sementi
,
Italy
C Lindquist
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