Lol, bean nerd. There's nothing wrong with that : )
I sure wish I still had that correspondence with the man who sent me those beans! I know he thought(or knew) they were the same bean.
They do make nice little green beans.
Remy

The only problem now will be to keeping my hands off them as I walk by, I need to let the rest go for seed. It will be another week before any of the other beans are ready to eat.
Annette

Interesting report, aftermidnight! Are your bean varieties separate enough to be sure there was no cross pollination for your seeds for next year? I'm pretty sure my Pelandrons cross pollinated with my Fortex last year. The Fortex flowers are still white, but some of the beans have suspicious purple streaks! I always grow them side by side. That could muddy the waters when you go to compare again.

Riverfarm, except for two plants these three varieties were started in the greenhouse but moved out to different locations in the garden so there's little chance of cross pollination, the two plants one each of CdeC and RE were under Remay when the flowers started to form so I'm pretty sure they didn't cross. The two plants of CdeC and RE I'm growing from my own collected seed will stay in the greenhouse too, the second time around the seed only took 4 days to germinate so I'll be able to compare these two again this year.
Annette

Annette,
I did a little Googling of Haricot Comtesse de Chambord. There were lots of hits, many in French. Comtesse de Chambord beans have been around for a long time at least since the late 1800's, and they have a lot of synonyms. The only word close in any of the writing to Ritz Escoffier was Riz.
I Googled Haricot Ritz Escoffier and got absolutely nothing except our posts here. I'm wondering if that has something to do with why the trader thought they were the same bean.
Remy

Remy, I've tried looking R.E. up too, if you drop the 't' in Ritz it would make more sense, all I came up with for Escoffier was the name of a chef, so who knows (shrug). In any case both these beans were very tasty, I'll grow a couple of rows of only one variety next year. I have to admit dry they're a bit fiddly to shell, but since I want them for green beans this won't be much of a problem.

Annette

Just a heads up that I harvested my Comtesse de Chambord beans yesterday and have about 1/4 pound of seed. It is not enough to send to Sandhill, but will be a really good start for a large crop next year. I had to put in some time learning how to grow them. They are poor germinators and do best if started in the greenhouse in celltrays.

DarJones

Dar, you might have better results with your own seed, I'm doing another comparison (CdeC and R.E) with seed I harvested from the ones I planted earlier on, granted they're in the greenhouse but 4 days later they were up. Much faster then the first time around, we really don't know how fresh the seed was we started with, this might have made a difference. We had such a rotten start to this year I think I'll be starting most of my beans in the greenhouse from now on.

Remy, have a look at the leaves on both of these, at this early stage (7 days from planting the seed) they do look a little different.

The cotyledons on the R.E. (on the left) are slightly bigger and the seedlings are shorter than CdeC. So although I couldn't tell the difference in taste, I'm back to thinking they're close but no cigar, like my italians and Uncle Steve's.

Annette

They do look different. I can't imagine the plants would have that much of a difference growing side by side if they were the same.
Remy

After tonight I've come to the conclusion they are different, I just looked at these two again, Ritz Escoffier's leaves are definitely a darker green, a slightly different shape and when you run a leaf through your fingers they also feel different.

Annette