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 25 bean fruits & people DHJanzen100966.jpg high resolution
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| This yard-long bean (Vigna) is an Asian species that is eaten like a vegetable (as are green beans, Phaseolus vulgaris) and simply shows how the bean fruit form can be evolutionarily pushed into yet more forms than are found in nature. However, even in this case it is not clear how much of the elongate form is due to selection by farmers and to what degree by some unknown seed dispersal agent (or the ergonomics of fruit formation - imagine a plant that makes only few fruits, but each contains many dozens of bean seeds, so that there is selection for a few very long fruits rather than for many smaller fruits as is the case with green beans). | ||
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