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Asparagus Pea Lotus Tetragonolobus Purpureus Seeds
Packet of 25+ very rarely available home grown organic seeds!
Glorious little scarlet red flowers, edible beans, and being a vining ground cover make this a great choice for pretty much everywhere as a space filling edible crop.
Visually quite similar to the other Asparagus Pea Psophocarpus Tetragonolobus.
This fella is much smaller though, with the actual beans, flowers and the whole plants total growth being about about half as big.
You can eat the beans, flowers and young shoots raw or cooked, and they look really nice in a salad.
Taste wise they are nothing like asparagus, and it is though the common name came from the cooking method.
The real Asparagus Officinalis is best cooked young and tender, and quickly frying in butter was always the standard method of cooking.
These guys too are delicious when prepared like that, and some folks say that is how they got the name.
Fried tempura style, boiled(quickly), steamed, added to soups and stews, or just chucked onto of a roast in the final ~15mins to add colour and suck up any pan juices they do taste really awesome.
They have been a popular novelty crop forever, even being mentioned in a 1734 gardening article by writer Phillip Miller.
If you wait too long to harvest the pods and they get a bit fibrous and woody, then you can always just leave them to fully mature and roast the seeds as a coffee substitute.
Tried it myself and I have to say, not bad at all, but a bit fiddly being so small.
Known as Lotus tetragonolobus or Tetragonolobus purpureus most commonly, but also Lotus palaestinus, Tetragonolobus siliquosus, Lotus Siliquosus and Tetragonolobus edulis every now and then.
It also has a heap of interesting common names like crimson bean, figgiela hamra, fluegelerbse, guisantillo rojo, hauwklaver, lotier rouge, pisello asparagio, red deer vetch, red wing bean, red wing pea, roode, rote spargelerbse, sparrisaert, square podded pea, squarepod deervetch, veccia pisello, winged bean, winged pea etc etc etc.
My favourite is Crimson Dragons Teeth.
I reckon you will be pretty hard pressed to find a cooler name than that!
Grown by me and the Mrs organically, no chems no nasties no problems!!!
