A first glance at the seeds from the Heritage Seed Library (for whom I was growing this as a Seed Guardian) seemed to back up the idea that this was a broad bean hybrid. The seeds are very large indeed, olive-tan in colour and somewhat flat, similar to Dutch Capucjiners but larger. They do resemble small old-fashioned broad beans such as the ancient Martock variety. They even have a black hilum, which is unusual in peas but common in broad beans.
Once I started growing the plants though, I had to concede that the broad bean thing is most likely a myth. That's just my opinion of course and I'm open to being proved wrong, but there was really not a single trait in Irish Preans which could have come from a broad bean, other than the appearance of the seeds. In every respect it looked and grew like a normal pea. If a cross between Pisum sativum and Vicia faba is possible, and I don't know that it is, I would expect it to have a lot more variability and at least some distinct traits from both parent varieties. This one is Pisum sativum all the way through. All its traits are pea traits.
That's not to say Irish Preans is a typical pea. It's exceedingly tall ... in excess of 8 feet ... and needs something suitably tall and sturdy to climb up. It may also need regular tying-in to prevent it from flopping over. I'm used to growing tall peas but I found it difficult to find anything robust enough to support this supersize variety. Growth is voluptuous and the leaf axils have a small smudge of pink pigmentation at the base. The other thing that sets it apart is that it's incredibly late-maturing. The latest I've ever grown, in fact. All the other peas in the garden grew, set flowers and set pods, and still Irish Preans was a mountain of foliage showing no hint of flower buds. I had already harvested most other varieties by the time the first little clusters of buds appeared. |
