I was looking through my photos of my long beans and realized I had a tale in the making. One of the bean’s names is the snake bean, and I have photos that can explain how this could have come about.

You may remember my photo of the bean looking like a pet snake sprawled along my arm…

Well-named "snake bean"

Well here’s how that bean came to look that way…

Remember how the petals of the flower drops off after it’s been pollinated, leaving a nicely formed baby bean behind? Well, this particular flower had a problem dropping off because it had rained before the petals could fall. The petals got plastered to the bean when they were first soaked, and then dried, stuck in that position. The bean, however, kept growing in length but was unable to detach the end. This created a weird loop.

Help, I'm stuck!

Once I realized the bean was stuck in the shape of a pretzel, I gave it a hand and detached the dried petal from the body of the bean.

Can somebody tell me where I'm going? I can't see!

Unfortunately, the bean couldn’t and didn’t straighten out, even when the dried petal finally fell off from the tip.

Ewww, it REALLY looks like a snake now!

So it got stuck in it’s serpentine shape and was fated to continue it’s journey in that form.

And that, my friends, is how the snake bean probably got it’s name. You may applaud now.

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