Devoted readers of this blog have been relentless, "enough about the baby, what about the beans?" So I take this brief moment while The Mister has the baby, not to do something useful like take a shower or file medical paperwork, but rather to post photos of legumes in Italy.
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6 comments:
Does the trip to Italy seem like another lifetime?
I do have a question about 'beans.' I realize you are probably using the term 'beans' loosely for literary effect, but which legumes are actually 'beans,' or is it really correct to refer to any legume as a 'bean?'
P.S. I for one am far from tired of news of the little human 'bean' who just emerged from his pod!
I'm a lumper-- anything in the Fabaceae (broad sense, which includes the Mimosoideae, the Caesalpinioideae and the Papilionoideae), the "Bean Family" is a bean to me. Similarly, anything in the rose family is a rose, unless you are talking more specifically about roses, which are genus Rosa. The genus of most edible beans is Phaseolus, but soybeans are Glycine and garbanzos are Cicer.
Yes, TT, I was joking. Nobody has yet asked for a return to the beans.
Not being fully up on my Italian flora, my best guesses for these are: (Upper left) Dalea or Lespedeza growing on 2000 year old walls in Ostia Antica; (UM) wistera (all over the place); (UR) wild sweet pea, Lathyrus; (Lower left) black locust, "acacia" Robinia growing along railroad tracks; (LM) broom, Genista at the Formus in Rome; (LR) unknown along seaside trail in dry chaparrel in Cinque Terra, possibly Desmodium?.
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