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Dolichos lablab
DOE-lee-chos LAB-LAB
Annual vine for sun.
Tall climbing: Wide spreading
Spacing: 4-8’
HABIT: Purple flowers in late summer, followed by short, deep purple seedpods. Tall climbing annual vine, planted from pretty black and white seed sin the spring. Fast growing
and beautiful.
CULTURE: Very easy to grow in most soils.
The Hyacinth Bean (Dolichos lablab, syn. Lablab purpureus), also called Indian Bean and Egyptian Bean, is a plant of the family Fabaceae is a species of bean widespread as a food crop throughout the tropics, especially in Africa. It is also grown as forage and as an ornamental plant.
USES: Late summer color, shade for arbor or trellis.
PROBLEMS: Black fuzzy caterpillars. Good news is that they grow up to be beautiful butterflies.
NOTES: Name is now Lablab purpureus. Beans are edible but not very good. They should be cooked when very young and tender.
Jefferson's Vines of Summer: Beauties and Beasts
Ask any of Monticello's gardeners and they will tell you that enough has been said about the Hyacinth Bean. From late summer through the first hard freeze their thick vines twine around the black locust arbor at the southwest corner of Jefferson's 1000-foot-long vegetable garden terrace. Festooned with glorious purple blossoms, it unabashedly beckons the strolling parade of visitors along Mulberry Row to shout again and again: "What's that purple flower?" Seed packets are often decimated at the Garden Shop long before this King of Vines retires for the season. Its popularity has spread quickly. Only a few years ago, it seems, this plant was virtually unheard of, but in this year alone I have seen it bedecking everything from the humblest back porch to the entry gates of the Governor's mansion in Atlanta.
Thomas Jefferson, the Gardener.
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