Phaseolus vulgaris in the context of "Green bean"

The Three Sisters (Spanish: tres hermanas) are the three main agricultural crops of various indigenous people of Central and North America: squash, maize ("corn"), and climbing beans (typically tepary beans or common beans). Traditionally, several Native American groups planted sunflowers on the north edges of their gardens as a "fourth sister." In a technique known as companion planting, the maize and beans are often planted together in mounds formed by hilling soil around the base of the plants each year; squash is typically planted between the mounds. The cornstalk serves as a trellis for climbing beans, the beans fix nitrogen in their root nodules and stabilize the maize in high winds, and the wide leaves of the squash plant shade the ground, keeping the soil moist and helping prevent the establishment of weeds.

Indigenous peoples throughout North America cultivated different varieties of the Three Sisters, adapted to varying local environments.The individual crops and their use in polyculture originated in Mesoamerica, where squash was domesticated first, followed by maize and then beans, over a period of 5,000–6,500 years. European records from the sixteenth century describe highly productive Indigenous agriculture based on cultivation of the Three Sisters throughout what are now the Eastern United States and Canada, where the crops were used for both food and trade.Geographer Carl O. Sauer described the Three Sisters as "a symbiotic plant complex of North and Central America without an equal elsewhere".

Phaseolus (bean, wild bean) is a genus of herbaceous to woody annual and perennial vines in the family Fabaceae containing about 70 plant species, all native to the Americas, primarily Mesoamerica.

It is one of the most economically important legume genera. Five of the species have been domesticated since pre-Columbian times for their beans: P. acutifolius (tepary bean), P. coccineus (runner bean), P. dumosus (year bean), P. lunatus (lima bean), and P. vulgaris (common bean). Most prominent among these is the common bean, P. vulgaris, which today is cultivated worldwide in tropical, semitropical, and temperate climates.

Green beans are young, unripe fruits of various cultivars of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Green beans are known by several common names, including French beans, string beans (although most modern varieties are "stringless"), and snap beans or simply "snaps". In the Philippines, they are also known as "Baguio beans" or "habichuelas" to distinguish them from yardlong beans.

Immature or young pods of the runner bean (P. coccineus), yardlong bean (Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis), and hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus) are used in a similar way. Green beans are distinguished from the many other bean varieties in that they are harvested and consumed with their enclosing pods before the bean seeds inside have fully matured. An analogous practice is the harvest and consumption of unripened pea pods, as is done with snow peas or sugar snap peas.

Baked beans is a dish traditionally containing white common beans that are parboiled and then baked in sauce at low temperature for a lengthy period. Canned baked beans are not baked, but are cooked through a steam process.

Canned baked beans are commonly made using navy beans (known as haricot beans in the UK), which originated in Peru. In New England, various indigenous legumes are also used, such as Jacob's cattle, soldier beans and yellow-eyed beans.

Epigeal germination (Ancient Greek ἐπίγαιος [epígaios] 'above ground', from ἐπί [epí] 'on' and γῆ [gê] 'earth, ground') is a botanical term indicating that the germination of a plant takes place above the ground. An example of a plant with epigeal germination is the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). The opposite of epigeal is hypogeal (underground germination).

| Epi: Above + Geo: Earth | + Germination

The kidney bean is a variety of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), its common name due to its resemblance to a human kidney.