u nice lady

Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants in history. Broad beans, also called fava beans, are in their wild state the size of a small fingernail, and were first gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills.[9] An early cultivated form were grown in Thailand from the early seventh millennium BCE, predating ceramics.[10] Beans were deposited with the dead in ancient Egypt. Not until the second millennium BCE did cultivated, large-seeded broad beans appear in the Aegean region, Iberia, and transalpine Europe.[11] In the Iliad (8th century BCE), there is a passing mention of beans and chickpeas cast on the threshing floor.[12]

In more recent times, the so-called "bush bean" has been developed which does not require support and has all its pods develop simultaneously (as opposed to pole beans which develop gradually).[8] This makes the bush bean more practical for commercial production. Beans were an important source of protein throughout Old and New World history, and still are today.

Unlike the closely related pea, beans are a summer crop that needs warm temperatures to grow. Legumes are capable of nitrogen fixation and hence need less fertiliser than most plants. Maturity is typically 55–60 days from planting to harvest.[6] As the bean pods mature, they turn yellow and dry up, and the beans inside change from green to their mature colour.[clarification needed] As a vine, bean plants need external support, which may take the form of special "bean cages" or poles. Native Americans customarily grew them along with corn and squash (the so-called Three Sisters),[7] with the tall cornstalks acting as support for the beans.

This is one of various examples of how narrower word senses enforced in trade regulations or botany often coexist in natural language with broader senses in culinary use and general use; other common examples are the narrow sense of the word nut and the broader sense of the word nut, and the fact that tomatoes are fruit, botanically speaking, but are often treated as vegetables in culinary and general usage. Relatedly, another detail of usage is that several species of plants that are sometimes called beans, including Vigna angularis (azuki bean), mungo (black gram), radiata (green gram), and aconitifolia (moth bean), were once classified as Phaseolus but later reclassified—but the taxonomic revision does not entirely stop the use of well-established senses in general usage.

Seeds called "beans" are often included among the crops called "pulses" (legumes),[3] although the words are not always interchangeable (usage varies by plant variety and by region). Both terms, beans and pulses, are usually reserved for grain crops and thus exclude those legumes that have tiny seeds and are used exclusively for non-grain purposes (forage, hay, and silage), such as clover and alfalfa. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization defines "BEANS, DRY" (item code 176)[5] as applicable only to species of Phaseolus.