phaseolus
Noun
Meaning
A genus of leguminous plants, including the Lima bean, the kidney bean, the scarlet runner, etc. See Bean.
Source: Webster's dictionarySynonyms
Hypernyms
Phrases with the word
Examples
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization the term bean should include only species of Phaseolus; however, enforcing that prescription has proven difficult for several reasons.
Five kinds of Phaseolus beans were domesticated Kaplan, p. 30: Domestication, besides involving selection for larger seed size, also involved selection for pods that did not curl and open when ripe, scattering the beans they contained.
The frequently garden grown common bean - Phaseolus vulgaris - is epigeal while the closely related runner bean - Phaseolus coccineus - is hypogeal.
One is that in the past, several species, including Vigna angularis (azuki bean), mungo ( black gram ), radiata ( green gram ), and aconitifolia ( moth bean ), were classified as Phaseolus and later reclassified.
This was long before the New World genus Phaseolus was known in Europe.