“All The Flowers of Tomorrow are in the Seeds of Today”

Hello Reader!

As per Lyn's instructions to post our essays upon our blogs, so here is mine. Enjoy =D

“All The Flowers of Tomorrow are in the Seeds of Today”

Last year in my garden I planted, cared for and tended to over seventy-five different varieties of the common bean. Phaseolus vulgaris (for that is its Latin name) is a very demure and unassuming annual plant that grows quietly where sown and requires little attention to develop fully. When the end of summer rolls around, the bean plant calmly sets its seeds and accepts its fate – and dies just as quietly and complacently as it lived. And while each bean plant looks rather like its neighbour, I have been captivated by the extraordinary diversity of their seeds for over five years now.

In the bean patch of my garden over seventy-five different colours and shapes of beans grow. Some seeds are pure orange, lemon yellow, neon pink, lime green, plain white or dull black. Others are grey splotched with purple or have red dots upon a brown basecoat. Some are light blue with darker brown speckles while others still are red and orange or brown. A few even have designs, including “Yin-yang”, of which one half of the seed is white with a black dot and the other half is black with a white dot.

In size they also vary – one variety is tinier than a grain of rice while another is bigger than a blueberry. Most however, are around the size of a fingernail, but swell or shrink and change shape depending upon how good the year was. Some seeds grow flattened like a penny while others are round and fat, and even more are elongated and slender. But what amazes me most is how it was not by my hand that this great diversity arose – the vast majority of these bean varieties have been around for at least a few hundred years, if not a few thousand!

So if not from my garden, how and where did this great variety in beans really come from? I know that the seeds planted one year must come from a previous year’s crop, but how many generations back must I go before I can determine how and where the beans in my garden originated?

According to recent scientific papers, about 10,000 years ago in both Central and South America the common bean diverged from its ancestral species of Phaseolus aborigineus. Whether by human hands or a speciation event the reason for this divergence is unknown. Either way though, it is clear from archeological evidence that after this date – about 8000 years BC – humans began to cultivate the common bean.

Undeniably since this speciation event, beans have been grown and harvested by someone's caring hand. And while the stories of those individuals have been blown away and lost on the winds of time, the varieties they grew still remain. Included in these are “Anasazi” and “Hidatsa Shield” beans. And because these varieties are present and grown today declares to the world that the actions of those long-ago people haven’t yet been completely forgotten.

But all this occurred a few thousand years ago – so between then and now who was growing beans, and where? Well, up until the 12th century, beans were solely grown in South America as well as some parts of Mexico. Then in 1100 AD, beans seeds were acquired by the Native Peoples of the eastern United States of America. After this date, the common bean was grown in a new land by a new people. And just as those people adapted to include beans in their culture, the seeds they planted adapted to their new land, producing new and different varieties including “Hopi Black” and “Arikara Yellow”. So, just as how the ancient Mexicans are remembered today by the beans they once grew, so too are the people of the eastern United States.

The next big journey that beans took was in the early 1500s, when their seeds were packed aboard the ships of European explorers and brought to the “Old World”. At first they were regarded as a novelty, but a mere fifty years after their arrival, the common bean was grown across much of Europe. And as the people who grew them intertwined their fate with the wandering vines of the bean plant, their lives are remembered in the seeds they saved for the next year’s crop.

Over the next four centuries, more bean varieties were moved from the Americas to Europe, while others (such as the original “Sulphur” bean) diffused throughout the rest of the world. Some varieties (including “Mayflower” and “Red Valentine”) returned to North America with European immigrants and were grown across that entire continent. But no matter their individual stories, within the past five years, seventy-five of the world’s varieties of beans have made their way into my garden here in downtown Kamloops.

Thinking about how the ancestors of the beans I now so caringly cover with soil and tend to were also tended to by countless people throughout history just blows my mind. And when I consider that people have been saving and re-planting the ancestors of my seeds every year for the past TEN THOUSAND years leaves me in a state of wonder and awe.

Thus when I thought about how the bean seeds I hold today are the result of the efforts of incalculable numbers of people throughout time, I realized that the world in which we live in today would not be the same if our ancestors hadn’t worked hard or made the decisions that they did. And while to us now their stories may be forgotten and their lives unknown, the impact that they’ve had upon the world and our shared future is nonetheless substantial.

So just as my ancestors tended to the ancestors of the beans I now grow today, one day my descendants will grow the daughters of the beans I shall raise tomorrow. And a few thousand years after I am dead and gone, the seeds I cared about today will remain and they will tell my story. They will say to the people millennia from now that there once was a person who cared and grew these varieties year after year. And while my name and face may be forgotten, my descendant seeds will remain and tell my story – because what I chose to do today decided what sort of tomorrow the future will be.

References:

Botany 940 – Systematics Seminar [Internet]. c2011. Wisconsin, USA: University of Wisconsin-Madison; [Fall 2011; cited 2012 Feb 16]. Available from: www.botany.wisc.edu/courses/botany_940

Berglund-Brücher O, Brücher H. c1976. The South American Wild Bean (Phaseolus aborigineus Burk.) as Ancestor of the Common Bean. Economic Botany. 30(3): 257-272.

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) [Internet]. c1977. [cited 2012 Feb 16]. Available from: http://www2.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/pr/garten/schau/PhaseolusvulgarisL/Common_bean.html

Diamond G. c1999. Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York (New York): W.W. Norton and Company. 151p.

Field Beans [Internet]. c2011. Manitoba: Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives; [cited 2012 Feb 16]. Available from: http://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/crops/pulsecrops/bhd03s01.html

Heirloom Beans [Internet]. Carman, Manitoba: Heritage Harvest Seed; [updated 2012; cited 2012 March 18]. Available from: http://www.heritageharvestseed.com/beansrs.html

Purdue Agriculture - Horticulture and Landscape Architecture [Internet]. c1998. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University; [cited 2012 Feb 16]. Available from: http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/phaseolus_vulgaris.html

Singh SP, Gepts P, Debouck DG. c1991. Races of the common bean (Phaseolus-vulgaris, Fabaceae). Economic Botany. 45 (3): 379-396.

Wendat (Huron): History [Internet]. c2005. Canada: Library and Archives Canada; [updated 2005 Sept 9; cited 2012 March 18]. Available from: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/settlement/kids/021013-2111.2-e.html