"I was hoping to buy (or trade for) some unusual heirloom beans. Does anyone have suggestions what kind I should get?"

You really should do a little reading through this forum. ;-)

Suggestions would depend upon what you were interested in - bush or pole? Snap, shelly, or dry? Green-podded, or other colors? Common beans, runner beans, limas, cowpeas, garbanzos, yardlongs, adzuki, soybeans, mung?

Vermont Bean Seed Co. and Seed savers Exchange both carry large selections of heirloom beans, with good photos & descriptions.

Members of the Seed Savers Exchange (there are many of us here, self included) & GW members offer many more beans as exchanges... but you need to have some idea what you are looking for.

You might want to review the references I provided in the "Legume newbie help" thread, located just below this one in the Bean Forum home page. The books I mentioned there would give you a clearer idea of what's out there, and might help you decide which legumes you would be interested in growing.

Once you know what varieties you might be interested in, you can click on "Member pages" at the bottom of any GW page, then "Search member exchange lists" for the variety name. If you do a general search for "pole bean", you will find many being offered (I am at the bottom of that list).

Wow, thanks for info! First of all, let me apologize for not researching this forum a little more first. It must be annoying to hear the same questions over and over again. :) I have grown Scarlet Runner beans for about 5 years now and love them, but I had no idea that there was such a wide range of beans to choose from! I recently posted in the seed exchange forum to trade my runners for heirloom veggies and was hoping for a few offers of beans. Most, however, were offering tomatoes which aren't exactly my favorite veggie. :) I might have been more satisfied if I had known more specifically what I was after. This is all a fun learning experience for me. Also, I had no idea that I could search the member pages for seeds in their exchange lists. That is a big help - Thanks! I think pole beans sound the most interesting to me at the moment. ~Sam

Sam, just to whet your appetite... if you enjoy growing runner beans, you probably have red flowers and purple & black seeds. There are other runner beans I've seen that have flowers of white, red & white, apricot, or salmon pink. The seeds range from white, to black, to mostly purple, to brown. Runner beans are mostly decorative here; but in Europe, they are grown seriously as snap beans, and there are many named cultivars.

If you use the "Search" function at the bottom of each forum's home page (such as the Bean Forum start page) you can search either that forum only, or all of GW. For bean info, I recommend searching this forum first. ;-)

Apricot or salmon pink blossoms? I've never heard of that. I bet that is really pretty! Thanks again for your help. Someone has already emailed an offer to send me beans and I havn't even asked anyone yet. :) You guys are great!

~Sam