They are both the same: Phaseolus lunatus

I find them both totally delicious. We eat our limas both dry and fresh. I grow plenty to dry. We also grow and dry (and eat fresh) field peas and blackeyed peas. Yum.

agreed, they are both the same. However in the south, butterbean refers to the small flat limas (baby limas)white, green tinted or colored. In the midwest, the big limas are called butterbeans. Both are eaten both as green shellies and as dry beans. For dry beans all you have to do is let the pods dry on the vine. Then of course you have the thick limas like Fordhooks and Dixie Butterpeas.
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I grow the small ones every year. This time it's Violets Multicolored...next year I want some big 'o limas.
This year I have had terrible trouble getting any pole bean and many lima/butter beans to germinate. There are tiny round stink bugs migrating from the kudzu pile across the street: they all want my limas and pole beans. Completely covered with them sucking the life out of them and no controls for it. Grrrr!!! They decimate the baby plants as they poke out of the ground!

OK, y'all are southern so I'm going to take your word for it. That second to the last picture up there is what I think of as butterbeans but I remember as a kid that lima beans were gross. I haven't found any seeds yet so it's probably a moot point this year but that's going on my list for next year and hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised. Might even try some 3-sisters next year. What a great teaching opp for my junior farmers!

That photo is of Henderson's Baby Lima, one the oldest in continuous existence. It is white, but virtually identical in size to the other colors of baby limas. Wood's Prolific is also white but a shade larger. Eastland is a similar white.

I've always been confused about this as well. I, too, thought the 2nd to last pic was, in my mind at least, a 'butter' bean! lol

Farmer Dill ~ Where do you get your Wood's Prolific seed from? The only source I could find was Reimer Seed co.

Thanks!
~Wendy

White 'Dixie Butterpeas' for me - a bush-type lima with plump, round little beans. Dad used to plant two 100-ft rows - your back would be screaming before you picked to the end.
Have a buddy here who lets 'em set pods until about half are starting to get dry, then pulls 'em up by the roots and takes 'em to the shade to pick 'em off the vines. Gives you some nice fresh ones to eat and some dry ones for later use.
It's WAY easier and COOLER 'picking' that way!

I can't believe this is confusing to people. All you have to have is a little common sense. It does not matter what people call them in different parts of the country. They are the same. They are light green Lima beans when picked fresh, shelled and cooked. They are grayish/white after being dried for you to cook. However, you can also buy them canned where they are cooked for you after they are dried - and these are sometimes incorrectly called Lima beans even though they are no longer green. Technically you can call either one by either name. It's a cultural thing.

Wood's prolific is still available from Southern States and it is a butterbean from Virginia to Georgia. I think Teija is thinking of butterpeas or he is in a different part of the south than I am familiar with. Coop. https://www.southernstates.com/catalog/c-1043-vegetable-seed.aspx

It seems to me that the real issue btbarbara had when she asked her original question in 2011 was that her mother served her canned Lima beans. They are gross. Fresh limas, perhaps fresh from the garden, lightly steamed are very different. Do not boil! Frozen can be OK, but again lightly steamed.

In the South (im from Mississippi, lima beans and butter beans are not the same Lima beans are smaller and green. Butter beans are speckled

I'm from SC, and I know there are Large and Baby Lima Beans, and they are both white...Canned Green Butterbeans (that's their name, not how they are packaged), and there's Speckled Butterbeans...and believe me, there is absolutely no similarity in the taste of Lima's and Butterbeans..Lima's taste is similar to the Great Northern Bean, (kinda bland), while the Butterbeans have a very noticeable buttery taste...

Even though they are the same bean, why not stress they are largely NOT interchangeable in recipes. If a recipe calls for butter beans, use that and if it calls for lima beans, use that. The taste and color are different, and should be acknowledged. If I'm making Pasta E Fagioli, the recipe will call for butter beans, not lima beans, because lima beans are synonymous with the smaller greenish beans, which would not taste/look right in that dish. Coriander and cilantro are the same too, but you know if you ran out of cilantro, you are not going to sprinkle coriander in for a substitute. I expect more from a culinary blog.