Why Are Baby Lima Smaller Than Regular Limas
Trivia buffs and riddle lovers can accept a break today, because the answer to the question, "What's the deviation between a lima bean and a butter bean?" is… nothing.
Both are just unlike names for the tasty legume Phaseolus lunatus.
But that'southward non the complete story. Sometimes habitation gardeners will find information technology relevant that a bean has one of these labels or the other, especially in detail areas of the state, or the globe.
At the aforementioned time, when you shop for seeds or make up one's mind which diverseness to plant in your garden, information technology'due south important non to let the lima-versus-butter-bean confusion influence your choices.
Instead, focus on the of import distinctions for any lima or butter bean variety you might grow. I'll share the top three here, and cover these other topics, besides:
What You'll Learn
- The Difference Betwixt Lima and Butter Beans
- Other Names for These Legumes
- Are Butter Peas Lima Beans?
- three Traits Are More Of import Than the Names
- Taste Profile
- Bush-league vs. Vine
- Days to Maturity
The Deviation Between Lima and Butter Beans
They may look alike, whether y'all view them in numberless of dried heirlooms, on canned appurtenances' labels, or if you lot're one of the fortunate few who spots them shelled at a farm stand.
But one is called "butter bean" and the other "lima." What's up with that?
Mostly, a regional tendency to nickname our favorite veggies is at play. These ii common names both apply to Phaseolus lunatus, and are used interchangeably as umbrella terms for its many cultivars.
So, yes, lima and butter beans are the same affair. They both crave a warm-atmospheric condition, frost-costless growing season, and produce seeds that can be cooked fresh or dried. And neither has edible pods.
With that said, though, sometimes people in a certain region exercise mean something specific when they use one name or the other.
P. lunatus includes a variety of beans of different sizes. Some of the larger seeds can be every bit wide every bit an inch and a one-half, and the smallest tin can be about the size of your pinky fingernail.
In some areas, the large ones are called "butter beans," while in others, they're known as "limas."
The Brits, for instance, are in the "big equals butter" military camp, referring to virtually all P. lunatus cultivars equally butter beans, but especially the ones they describe as being large and starchy.
Perchance they have recognized that these are delicious served with a pat of butter on summit, much like a fresh-baked, homegrown potato.
In the American South, people usually call all of them "butter beans."
If you're offered a dish of them at an old-school diner, yous can expect any variety, but you should assume they'll also be cooked with some sort of pork or smoked meat (and that they'll be delicious).
But it's also common in the South to phone call the bigger ones limas and reserve the butter bean moniker for "baby limas," the ones with the smallest seeds.
I take equally my authority on this affair "Marion Brown'southward Southern Melt Volume," compiled from exhaustive correspondence with Southern home cooks and well-known chefs, and published in 1951.
Information technology's bachelor on Amazon if y'all want to snag a copy of your ain.
Marion Brown's Southern Melt Book
Brown ascertained, "The lima edible bean is larger and more than mealy" but could be cooked in the aforementioned fashion as butter beans.
For either, she recommended boiling ii cups of fresh shelled legumes until tender, draining, and then dressing them with a lump of butter, a teaspoon of sugar, and a cup of cream or milk, if desired.
It may be a stretch to compare cooked baby limas to my favorite dairy product, but these pocket-sized-seed types are velvety, fifty-fifty sort of buttery, when sauteed or even slow-cooked.
'Jackson Wonder'
The maroon-splashed 'Jackson Wonder' is an instance of this type, and seeds are bachelor from True Leaf Market.
Now, don't expect anyone from the U.k. to accept "lima" in their legume vocabulary, or for Southerners to phone call anything simply a large, pale P. lunatus seed a lima.
Merely veer abroad from either of those groups, and you'll find that many people take the contrary tack, calling all of the many varieties limas, a nod to the species' origins in Republic of peru, where it's been grown for around seven,500 years.
These legumes were domesticated in different areas of Mexico 500 to ane,300 years ago, and it was there that the smaller seed varieties were developed.
In 1907, Burpee introduced 'Fordhook,' which took but 70 days to mature and immune those in colder climates to begin growing this type of legume.
'Fordhook'
Early advertisements referred to them every bit "limas," and Burpee yet categorizes them that way, with nary a mention of butter.
Other Names for These Legumes
The many mutual names and colorful nicknames for sure vegetables, particularly legumes, are 1 of the things I really love about growing my own food.
P. lunatus offers an affluence of these titles, well beyond the two most common ones we've discussed hither then far.
One name that crops upwards adequately often is "potato bean," for the big white seeds that have a baked irish potato texture when boiled or steamed.
This type of legume is too known every bit a "Burma bean," probably considering it's often grown in that location.
"Sieva" or "Carolina" beans are two more that you lot might hear, particularly in the South.
These names probably came into common usage thanks to the cultivar 'Sieva Carolina.'
It was grown at Thomas Jefferson's plantation Monticello (which, by the way, is in Virginia, not either of the Carolinas) in the tardily 1700s and early 1800s.
Jefferson's agricultural mentor Bernard McMahon mentioned it and shared specifics on creating poles to back up hills of these "running Carolina lima beans" in his 1806 book, "The American Gardener's Calendar."
That particular blazon is a cold-resistant vine that produces white seeds. But in casual conversation, the names "Carolina" and "sieva" can utilize to other cultivars, too, particularly those that produce small white seeds.
Other pop cultivars have also spawned nicknames that take come into common usage for broader categories of P. lunatus.
Some gardeners and diners refer to all vining limas as "Republic of madagascar beans," though according to the Australian seed visitor Succeed Heirlooms, the proper name is specific to a cultivar with big speckled seeds grown every bit perennials in hot, dry climates.
Calculation to the confusion, the label "Madagascar bean" is also often used to depict vanilla beans grown in Madagascar.
Vanilla planifolia is an orchid species that produces seed pods. It originated in United mexican states, but the Republic of madagascar-grown version is lauded for its high vanillin content. It is not, even so, a butter edible bean.
"Calico bean" is some other nickname y'all may come across. It began as an culling proper noun for the 'Christmas' lima, a vining cultivar that originated in Peru and fabricated its manner to the US in the 1840s. It produces mottled maroon and foam-colored seeds.
Present, the term "calico" might loosely refer to any number of speckled, spotted, splashed, or freckled limas. Or it might be a pale white butter bean, or even a infant lima, that'south existence used in a recipe for "calico beans."
The ingredients in this item stew may vary, but is essentially a medley of browned ground beef and canned kidney beans, canned pork and beans, and canned P. lunatus, sauced up with shop-bought ketchup and brown carbohydrate.
I was intrigued when I discovered that the calico bean recipe presented by Johanna Christenson, a student intern at the N Dakota State University Extension Service, chosen for butter beans, and this referred to the big, white, mealy type.
Shall I proceed? I can, you know! This may be the nearly prolifically nicknamed legume of all time.
Other names include Cape peas, and Chad, civet, Guffin, Haba, Hibbert, Pallar, pocketbook, or Rangoon beans.
And I take 1 more, my favorite, which I have never actually heard spoken out loud but read of recently: mule ears!
Yep, information technology'south a Southern label, from the same people who bring yous the name "goober" for peanuts and say that wilted greens have been "kil't." I dearest it, and all the zany descriptors that accept emerged from my surface area of the country.
Doubtless at that place are many more monikers, since this legume has been domesticated since before v,000 BC. It's fun to think about all the nicknames assigned to this one vegetable garden crop across 7 millennia.
Are Butter Peas Lima Beans?
Now that we've cleared up the confusion, you'd probably like to leave information technology there. But for the sake of all that's tasty, I must add together i more variety to this chat: butter peas.
Even though they're not often grown exterior the American South, I retrieve they should be, because they're prolific, full of light-green vegetable flavor, and so velvety when cooked.
And they're also a type of P. lunatus, producing piddling morsels on two-foot bush-league plants. Butter peas are distinctly round, with seeds that resemble an undersized gumball. These go buttery when steamed, boiled, or stewed.
They take from 70 to 78 days to produce fresh pods for shelling.
This makes information technology possible to abound these in some shorter-season vegetable gardens, especially if you sow them indoors in biodegradable peat pots and transplant them out after all danger of frost has passed, pot and all.
If Southerners weren't already referring to them as butter peas (even though they are not a type of Pisum sativum or garden pea), I have no incertitude they would label these equally mini butter beans.
And I can clinch y'all that they're worth because if you're looking for a loftier-protein garden crop that'south hard to track down fresh at the farmers market, or, well… anywhere.
This leads usa to the adjacent topic, which is this: if you're not going to fret too much nearly which mutual proper noun is used to refer to these legumes, what should you focus on?
Coming up, I'll share the top three important distinctions to brand when yous select a variety to abound in your garden.
Spoiler alert: While you lot'll want to know the name of the cultivar you programme to grow, I'g going to recommend that you not spend some other 2d worrying about whether to phone call information technology a butter bean or lima, fifty-fifty if you're Peruvian or hail from Mississippi or Texas, or somewhere like that.
Call them what you like, and bask them!
three Traits Are More Of import Than the Names
Want to abound these whatchamacallits? I'm and so glad.
While you don't have to take sides on calling them by the Southern term or the Peruvian capital letter name, or whatever of their many alternate titles, it is a practiced idea to consider these three things earlier making your selection:
1. Taste Contour
If you're going to grow limas for fresh eating, drying, or freezing, you'll want to option a type that will sense of taste good to you, and perhaps the other diners in your household also.
The varieties with larger seeds in the pods tend to be earthy, with a starchy texture.
Notice I don't say mushy, because they are nothing like those overcooked, bitter, and yes, mushy frozen legumes you might have consumed in your younger years.
Though they're bigger, the larger-seed varieties tend to concord their shape meliorate during cooking. If you're envisioning making lots of soup, cassoulets, or chilled salads, opt for a large-seed diversity.
If you're pursuing a velvety texture and more of a light-green vegetable flavor instead of a "beany" sense of taste, the types with smaller seeds, or "infant limas," might be more your affair.
Annotation that the "babe" term refers to the variety and its tot-size seeds, not an immature variety of larger-seeded limas.
And call up that those smaller morsels tend to atomize during long cooking. And so while they're great for making a rich, silky hummus or a succotash with corn and ham, they're not at all the affair for stews or casseroles.
'Henderson' is one such variety of baby lima, an early, drought-tolerant bush type. It produces seeds that are nearly a third of an inch long, pale green when fresh and brilliant white when dry.
'Henderson'
'Henderson' seeds are available in packets and in majority sizes up to 25 pounds at True Leafage Market.
2. Bush vs. Vine
As a home gardener, you e'er want to know how much space a given variety will take up in your garden, and whether it will need back up.
For limas, it'due south easy to get distracted by a tricky cultivar name (or the hope of buttery flavor!) and forget to check whether y'all'll exist growing a vining (aka pole or climbing) or a bush blazon.
I can ostend that varieties that grow aerially tin save space on the ground, but bear in mind that some of those types also grow 10 to 12 anxiety tall, and demand super strong supports.
My 'Christmas' limas are one instance. The photo to a higher place shows just the top half of the vines where they have grown a good yard taller than the seven-foot arbor that supports them.
As for the bush types, they don't need support and are usually better suited to growing in containers.
But you lot typically can't grow every bit many of them if you have limited garden space, and they may not yield every bit much of a harvest as their pole diversity relatives.
three. Days to Maturity
Phone call them what you will, just resist the urge to select one of these legumes to grow without offset checking out how many days information technology volition need to mature.
That "no frost" growing requirement is non a suggestion to exist taken lightly. And so be certain to opt for a fast-growing bush blazon if you have a super brusque growing season.
Keep in listen that limas crave frost-complimentary days from sowing (in warm soil) to harvest.
When y'all'd like to have a harvest to dry for next year'southward seed or the winter panty, make sure to allow plenty time for them to reach the stage where the pods are brown and brittle ahead of the first frost.
The pole varieties do tend to take longer to grow, often every bit many as 85 to 100 days to harvest afterward sowing. Just they volition reward you with a longer harvest window to starting time the waiting.
If you accept a longer growing season but like the thought of growing a bush-league blazon, you tin always program to plant in succession.
I Can't Believe It's Not Lima!
I kind of take to laugh at myself for my mental attitude here.
Usually, I'm such a stickler, complaining when people misfile favas and edamame, for example, or if they show me a photo of yard-long beans when I asked for black-eyed peas.
But for these, I make an exception, because I'k so intent on leading more people to abound this delicious, high protein, oft-overlooked legume.
If you lot tin can find i to plant that you'll enjoy at harvest fourth dimension, I honestly don't care what name y'all telephone call it. Peachy Southern Bush-league? Rhett Butler Runners? Margarine? All good by me.
What nigh you? Have y'all grown ane of these, or heard of a proper name I haven't mentioned? Nosotros'd love to hear from you in the comments section below. That's also the spot for questions.
And if you lot'd like to acquire more near the many wonderful varieties and how to grow a bumper crop, I'd recommend reading these lima bean guides next:
- How to Grow Lima and Butter Beans in the Garden
- 13 of the All-time Lima and Butter Bean Cultivars to Grow in Your Garden
Source: https://gardenerspath.com/plants/vegetables/difference-lima-butter-beans/
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