Beans varieties with spots and swirls often have a few seeds with inverted pattern. The background and the pattern colour swap places. A bean with a lighter background and a darker pattern will display a darker background and light coloured pattern. If you plant these inversed seeds, the offspring will be normal again.

Freshly harvested seed also has different colours from older seed. What looks like vivid purple on shelling, becomes a dull brown after a few months in a seed packet.

If these statements do not fit what you see, a good photo would help.

Were the 'deviants' all in one pod, all on one truss or all on one plant? All on one plant would point to a cross as the most likely explanation.

If you are growing all the 'deviants' this year, you will either get a wide variation between the plants, where every plant has different pods and different seeds. And conclude from that that you had a crossed plant last year that gave you the purple seeds. Or you might get the 'normal' Logan Giant beans back. In that case you had inverted seeds, which is a rare, but normal, manifestation of what the seeds can look like with Logan Giant.

As far as I know, the pods with the "deviant" seeds came from several plants, but they were very rare. And the seeds colors haven't faded at all... I'm not entirely sure the beans were pure to begin with, so maybe they were already crossed and just showed up in second generation plants. I'll try to post a picture.

Thanks,
Abby

Interesting what you say about your seed colours staying the same in storage. I have experienced differences in seed coats of the same variety grown at different locations. Not quite sure why. I have just opened a swapped seed packet containing beans with brilliant purple markings. Yet purple seed markings here often turn to brown. Conversely, a dull light brown seeded variety from my garden, grown at the same swapper's location, has produced a shiny, pearly pink seed coat - much prettier than the seed I sent originally.

If you had impure seeds last year, the resulting 'deviant' seeds would all come from plants grown from impure seeds. And every seed on those plants would have been 'deviant', none like the original. Every plant with one 'deviant' seed, would have had all 'deviant' seeds, not just a few here and there.

It will be interesting to see what happens when you grow plants from the 'deviant' seeds this year.

Preparing a pot of pinto beans last night, I noticed several which were color inverted. Now I realize I have seen this before but never thought much about it. Thanks for calling attention to it and explaining it, Galina.

Jim

YouÂll find GonefishingÂs instructions on how to post pictures at this address: http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b333/1billp/PostAPictureA.jpg

Thank you Gonefishing.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:42896}}

Jimster and Abby, yes indeed Pinto shows this very redily. But once you are on the look-out there are many other beans that share this characteristic.

Here is a picture from the web which shows seedcoat inversion on just a few beans:

http://www.fiery-foods.com/images/ed/chiliconcarne/pinto_beans.jpg

A bean seed swap friend tried to stabilise a line of such inversed seed for years, but never got anywhere, because the colour change is back to normal the following generation. It does however occur slightly more often (but still very rare) when plants are stressed.

I'm back with Mystery Bean news!!! The Mystery Bean is most certainly a Logan Giant. All the plants display a robust growth habit producing long, plump pods exactly like the LG's I grew a couple years back. The seeds from this batch are still purple and some have a slight brown splash along with the purple coloring. I will post a pic as soon as I can take one.

Abby

M'kay, here's the beans. Sorry for the poor quality. The camera wouldn't cooperate.

I spoke to a lady at the Farmer's Market today and she said this is the normal color of a Logan Giant. But the original beans I planted were light brown on dark brown. NONE of them were this color. The only beans the Logan's were close to were Turkey Craw which are also a brown color.

Update! Upon speaking with Bill Best from heirlooms.org I found out that he has ID'd at least 3 kinds of beans that go by the name Logan Giant. And I think I've found a source for the Logan Giant (brown seeded) if anyone is interested. The source also has other bulk OP beans as well.

Not to throw a monkey wrench into the works... but your beans look very much like this:

This is "Rose", which I grew last year. My seed came from Gardenlad, who ran the AHSC out of Kentucky. I believe his seed came from Bill Best of the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center in Berea, KY. Since this bean is grown in your area, it may be that you have a cross.