Broad Bean Folklore

      A bright and sunny, but chilly day in Shropshire, as the cold nights continue to deter a lot of the seed I’ve sown in the garden from germinating.

       Not all the seeds though, because one plant which does seem to have a higher than usual ratio of germination to seeds sown than usual is the broad bean. And that’s a pity in some ways.

       When sowing my broad beans I followed the maxims laid down in the old rhymes associated with broad beans, which say that on St Valentines Day, they should be in the clay; that you should sow far more seeds than you need for the number of plants you hope to get – one to rot and one to grow, one for the pigeon and one for the crow – and that if you sow broad beans in the mud, they’ll grow like wood. Though that only actually rhymes if you come from north of Watford.

        What there wasn’t a rhyme to tell me, unfortunately, was what to do if a lot of plugs of broad beans you ordered from a leading nursery back before Christmas, and then forgot about, turn up after the seeds you’ve sown are in the ground.

       Try to avoid my garden when so many beans are in flower is one they ought to do a rhyme about, perhaps, especially at night, because there is an old superstition, known in some parts of the country, which says that a field of broad beans in full flower has a scent which can cause such a quickening of a person’s breathing and heartbeat, and arouse such a general feeling of excitement bordering on intoxication in them if breathed  in too deeply, that someone sleeping amongst them through the night can be driven to madness by morning.

      In the garden, perhaps not at night if it can be avoided. Trying not to breathe too deeply of any broad bean flowers there may be around. Look out for Cornus nuttallii, the Mountain Dogwood, or Pacific Dogwood, a deciduous, conical tree, which has large white bracts surrounding tiny flowers in late spring, and foliage that turns yellow, or occasionally red, in autumn.