What are these pods without peas in them growing in my yard?

May 10, 2020 12:42 PM

A plant in our yard grows some pods that look like peas but have no peas inside it. What is it?

We just moved into our home in Austin, Texas just over a month ago and about a week ago, I noticed the vine on the side of the yard had peas of some kind on it! They looked like sugar snap peas, but when I went to pick them today, the pods were tough and woody and when I broke them open, there were no peas inside, just solid density.

So, are these just some sort of mock pea? Did I let them go too long and the plant reabsorbed the pea and became something else? Is this something else entirely?

Here are pictures of the pods and plants.

posted by Gucky to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

Those look like green beans to me, rather than peas.
posted by current resident at 1:59 PM on May 10, 2020

Those are definitely not green beans, or other member of the bean family.

The little twirly grabber strings in some of the photos are characteristic of peas, and make me think that this is some plant in the "pea family" (whatever that means) but not actually the usual kind of peas. The leaves are not like the leaves on any peas that I've grown.
posted by heatherlogan at 3:43 PM on May 10, 2020

Does this plant have flowers? If you cut open a pod are there small seeds inside? That might also help in identify. I'm stumped but fascinated. Peas do not generally become woody on interior. As they grow the peas grow inside as well and snap peas become more like shell peas with meatier peas still in the pod.
posted by countrymod at 4:07 PM on May 10, 2020

It looks a lot like the pods that grow on trumpet vines to me (this post brought back memories of opening up the pods that grew on my grandfathers’s trumpet vines in Dallas when I was a kid) but the leaves are wrong.
posted by MadamM at 4:08 PM on May 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I found something called cross-vine (Bignonia capreolata) that looks similar. It's in the same family as the trumpet vines MadamM mentions.
posted by Redstart at 4:33 PM on May 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure they are runner beans / Phaseolus coccineus, the tendrils -sticky uppy bits that they cling on with- are a give-way. So's the woodyness.

There are beans in there, just the same colour as the pod (there are many colours). If they've been dry beans may be small. Normally if not dry/stringy you'd eat the whole thing, usually shred them lengthwise and boil for 10mins.

I grew a hundredweight one year for pocket money.
posted by unearthed at 4:45 PM on May 10, 2020

The leaves look like neither peas nor beans. The leaves look too glossy for runner beans as well. The way the vine grow and the appearance of the pods look like some kind of wisteria (do not eat!), but without seeing it flower it would be hard to tell. There are definitely ornamental vines which form pods after flowering, you may be able to tell next spring.
posted by Wavelet at 5:01 PM on May 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

There are so many toxic plants in the pea family that, even if you do manage to find some pods that aren't empty, I'd strongly advise against eating any unless and until an expert on the subject identifies these plants after studying them in person.
posted by chromium at 5:02 PM on May 10, 2020 [10 favorites]

Keep some and dry them, will probably be easier to I'd for sure then.
posted by unearthed at 5:11 PM on May 10, 2020

I really think it's likely to be crossvine. Look at the picture of the leaf structure at the bottom of this Forest Service page about crossvine and compare it to your plant. See how the leaves are in pairs with a curly tendril coming out at the base of each pair? See the pairs of tiny leaflike things along the main stem? I see something like that in one of your pictures. That's all pretty unique, so if your plant looks like that it's probably crossvine. It's too hard to tell for sure just by looking at your pictures, but it shouldn't be hard for you to tell for sure if you go out and look at the actual plant.
posted by Redstart at 6:40 AM on May 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yep, not green beans.
There are no apparent seeds inside.

They do have orange flowers (all wilted right now) that look like the trumpet vine, good eyes, but agree that the leaves are the wrong shape.

I'll keep looking at vines in that family to see if it's a relative. Everyone saying, "Oh god, trumpet vine is terrible and will take over" has me a bit worried, but it's living harmoniously with the four o'clocks (Mirabilis jalapa) well on the same fence and hasn't choked out the cactus either.

It doesn't have the leaf structure of cross vine and the flowers are horn-shaped, so I don't think it's wisteria.

And, in general, don't worry. I'm not going to eat random things just to see what happens. (I mean, anymore. We all had our Anarchist's Cookbook morning glory seeds and banana peels phase that we're glad we just puked from, right?)

Thanks everyone. If I figure it out I'll update y'all.
posted by Gucky at 6:50 AM on May 16, 2020 [1 favorite]