A Cross: Barksdale Wax Pole with Tennessee Cutshort

[macmex]

Here's an interesting observation on this F1 generation cross. The pods have faint red striping when they begin to dry down. They mature fairly quickly too. Here's a picture of the striping at 70 days from seed.


This was on September 28, 2022.

Here's a photo of three pods I picked on September 30. They are now fully plumped and beginning to dry. I won't be able to check on these next week, so I picked them to take home with me.


By the looks of the pods I'd say that the seed is going to be plump when dried. Can't wait to see what color it is.


I'm betting on brown, but we'll see in a couple of days when I shell the seed out.

[woodeye]

Between the anticipation of what color your bean seeds are, and the anticipation of how your sweet potato harvest is this year, macmex, you have your Anticipation Mode running at full throttle right now. The pods look great, anxious to see the beans on shelling day...

[hmoosek]

Those pods are beautiful! The red streaking really sets them off.

[chrysanthemum]

Those look like really nice full pods, macmex. This is exciting! The streaking is pretty, though I have to say that it looks pink to my eye. That could just be my computer screen, though, or I could just be more fussy about color names. That’s definitely what my husband would say. (Just for fun, I just enlarged the picture and showed it to my husband and asked him to describe the coloration of the pods. He said, “Light tan.” I asked him if he saw anything else, and sure enough, he said, “Red streaks.”)

[macmex]

I didn't mean to draw things out so much but I left work for a week to host my son and granddaughter, and forgot the seed in my office, at work!  Today I managed to get back to the office and look at that seed. There were more pods ready to be harvested too.

Here's what the great majority of the seed looks like, coming out of the pod.



All of the seed is brown, just like what I planted. Remember, the original mother plant, in this cross was Barksdale, which has slender white seed. The pollen donor was Tennessee Cutshort, which has fairly fat brown seed. (Note: Tennessee Cutshort is not a true cutshort. Its seeds, though plump, are not PACKED into the pods after the style of a true cutshort.).

I shelled out a number of pods, all of which followed after the pattern seen above. But then, I got to this pod.



Now this is intriguing! This seed is truly cutshort! Notice how the seed is packed so tightly that it has squared ends? That's what real cutshort seed looks like.

F1 seed should produce 100% uniform offspring. That's what hybrids do. Yet I have two variations in this seed. Why? My conclusion is that one or both parent strains are not as uniform in genotype as expected. Both are F1 hybrids but from different parents, even though both Barksdale Wax Pole Bean and Tennessee Cutshort appear to be uniform strains, there has to be more diversity within them than meets the eye.

I also found a pod with very large, plump seed with somewhat squared ends and suspect that it's a transitional form between the other two.

I am faced with a decision for 2023. Which seed to I plant? Do I plant some of everything or choose one variant and go with it? Whatever I do, I know that in the F2 generation, we're likely to see some wild differentiation going on. I fully expect to see variation in seed size, color shape and pod size, style and color. From there I will need to choose what I want to select for.

Do you see how a simple little experiment like this can expand into something huge? Given unlimited time, space and energy, it's conceivable that one could stabilize DOZENS of strains out of this one cross. Yet the breeder doesn't completely run the show. We can hope and dream about what might be but only time will tell.

If I had my druthers, I'd love to select out a brown seeded, yellow podded true cutshort pole bean. We'll see.

My experience with the cross between Tennessee Cutshort and Cherokee Trail of Tears leads me to conclude that beans carry more genes than what are expressed, even in an established strain. When crossed, everything gets "stirred up," causing characteristics of long gone ancestors to crop up in the next couple of generations, until a new strain is stabilized.
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Another thought: What do these beans teach us about our Creator? Looking, this was the best scriptural text I could come up with.

“Who does great things, and unsearchable, Marvelous things without number.” Job 5:9 

God is so wonderful that he can hide a multitude of wonders in a simple bean. Though He knows they're in there, we have really have to pay attention to catch a glimpse of them or to comprehend the magnificence which God has worked into such "simple things" as beans. God is so wonderful that He doesn't have to "ration His works." He can afford to work wonders in every seed, even if entire generations of men may not notice they are there. To put lights in the sky, He didn't hang a lot of lights at 500' above the ground... NO! He cast GALAXIES across space! Yet, He has the time, energy and know how to work wonders in ... a bean.

[hmoosek]

I’m going on memory, but doesn’t Tennessee Cutshort sometimes throw a pod of true Cutshort? What’s the name of that other bean that closely resembles it? Oh, I wish I could remember. @mexmac You grew that been along side TC. Wasn’t it a Frank Barnett bean?

Maybe that’s a hidden trait In TC that hasn’t been selected for. I like the looks of that last pod.

[macmex]

Good point. Yes, Frank Barnett looks just like Tennessee Cutshort except it has true cutshort seed. Though I haven't grown them side by side (for obvious reasons) they have been on opposite sides of the same garden. And, it's possible that Tennessee Cutshort and Frank Barnett may have come out of the same original parent stock. Who knows?

Tomorrow I'll post some photos of the different pods shapes I have. I was just looking and realized there is more variation going on here than first met my eye.

[chrysanthemum]

Thanks for the update, macmex, and for your reflections on the wondrous creation hidden in the bean genes. I appreciated that.

I don’t know either of the beans in your cross, but I have to say that the seeds in your second picture struck me as just gorgeous. I looked at them and thought, “Wow!”

[macmex]

It's interesting how one can "see" but not really "see" what is right in front of them. As I've written, taken photos and gone back over my observations I've realized that I haven't been noticing some things. For one, there is a LOT of variation in these F1 crosses. It's nearly impossible to discern from a photo, but there are differences in pod width, shape, length and spacing between the seeds. That's a lot of variation. 



I got to thinking though, when I look at a spread of pods from Tennessee Cutshort I see some real variety there too. Not nearly this much, yet the pods are not really that uniform.

Here's a photo of one of the variations in the garden. This one is the cutshort plant.



Here's a photo of a plant with "regular" pods, ones that have non cutshort seed. These look very much like Tennessee Cutshorts. Yet, there are also pods which, though not cutshort in nature, are longer and slimmer than these. There's a lot of variation here.



I think I'm going to work on the cutshort variation, planting just those and selecting from there. I can save some of the other seed in the freezer, but then, I also have a good many of the F2 and F3 generation cross selections in the freezer from my work with the Cherokee Trail of Tears X Tennessee Cutshort cross, which started in 2016.

It occurred to me that a couple of you folk might like a packet of this seed and do your own selection. You could chose what you like and perhaps come up with your own distinct bean variety. We're talking about six to eight years of work to get a stable variety, but hey, you can eat the culls! What do you think?

[hmoosek]

Sign me up! I live for stuff like this!

[woodeye]

They all look great, macmex. The only reason I am not going to jump right in there and request a packet is that I don't think I have enough experience at growing beans of this type. I don't think it would be fair to the beans, or more experienced growers. If you had 5 lbs. of seed, I would gladly take some to try. Thank You for the very generous offer...

[macmex]

Moose, I'll send you a packet. It may take a little while, as I need to finish collecting seed. 

[macmex]

Well, it's June, 2023 and I finally got around to planting some of this seed. I decided to dedicate the garden (8X4') at work, since it has such excellent isolation and I can check on it on breaks. 

You'll remember that all the plants from the F1 seed, last year, produced green pods, albeit with varying styles of pod and shapes of seed. All seed came out brown. Interestingly, though neither Tennessee Cutshort nor Barksdale have true cutshort shaped seed, we did have some plants produce true cutshort shaped seed. Arbitrarily, I decided to focus on this seed, planting only true cutshort shaped seeds. I believe I sent HMOOSK some of the other seeds for him to grow.

Here's a picture of the seed I had set aside for this experiment. I planted less than half of it.



Here's a picture of the planting after I finished.



So what do I expect to see from this planting, now F2 seed? Well, I hope that a couple plants will have yellow pods. Perhaps some will have white seed. I suspect that not all will produce cutshort shaped seed, as the F2 generation will be remixing the genes a whole lot. F2 and F3 generations are where one sees the most novelty. After that it seems that things begin to stabilize again. 

With my limited experience, dealing with bean crosses, I am inclined to think that a growout from crossed bean seed "stirs the genetic pot, showing all kinds of traits that lay hidden in the ancestry of the two varieties." You can see this played out in "An Experiment with Bean Crosses," another thread where I document my work with a cross between Cherokee Trail of Tears and Tennessee Cutshort.

I think, if I could have any possible outcome from this experiment, I'd love to come up with a brown seeded, true cutshort with yellow pods, but only time will tell. I don't even know if those characteristics can co-exist in one plant.

[chrysanthemum]

Sounds like the beginning of a fun adventure, macmex. I’ll be interested to see what happens. Thanks for keeping us updated.

[macmex]

Here's a picture of my experimental bed of Barksdale X Tennessee Cutshort cross plants. This would be the f3 generation and I do hope to see some real differentiation. I'd like to see some yellow pods. I had to replant a couple poles, as I wanted one plant to the pole, and in some cases a seedling died or didn't come up. On June 9th I transplanted one seedling, where I'd had two come up and replanted seed on two poles. Today everyone looks good. The last seedling is breaking ground.