Strophostyles helvola hybrids

[Seth Doty]

Does anyone have any personal experience with hybridizing fuzzy bean with any other cultivated bean species? If it has been done & there is literature on it, that would be helpful as well. The plants are one of the few legumes that grow well in my sandy low organic matter soils under my high heat & humidity conditions. The pollen is viable at much higher temperatures than common bean and it set well under hot day and night conditions, which is also very useful for me. However, obviously, it is essentially a unimproved wild legume, and as such, the bean quality leaves a lot to be desired. I am sure, with enough time and effort, it could be domesticated as a great many other legumes have been, but experience with other crops has suggested, that when possible, hybridization with cultivated species is a much quicker, although still lengthy, process to incorporate desired attributes from a wild species than starting domestication from scratch. If there is any information about successful or even unsuccessful(what didn't work I'd also useful) attempts about interspecific hybridization with fuzzy bean it would be appreciated.

[Professor Porcupine]

All species of Strophystyles are cross compatible, all very phylogenically closely related.
I'd venture the sister genus Dolichopsis might also be cross-compatible but that's a wider jump and I need more research for that one.

For a wild Legume, it's actually a good wild edible, especially Strophostyles helvola which has the biggest seeds of the genus & according to Sam Thayer they taste good. Young pods are also edible like Green beans, he says they are edible raw but I wouldn't recomend eating raw for the same reasons it's not advisable to eat immature french & runner beans pods raw because they likely have similar toxins (and especially when cooking destroys these toxins anyways).

This is a project I want to work on, domesticating Fuzzy Beans so if you are interested, lets callaborate on this project!