Winged bean 'Climbing Thuong Hai'

Rediscovered in Vietnam after years of absence! This climbing winged bean is very popular in the tropics (native to New Guinea) and grows best in a greenhouse in our climate. Harvested young, the square, winged pods are deliciously tender, soft, and sweet. The beans develop quite late in the season, when the days are around 12 hours long, so we need a good October. All parts of the plant are edible, by the way:
1) The young leaves are tasty stir-fried like spinach
2) The very light blue flowers are edible and are used, for example, to colour rice
3) The roots are very rich in protein and have a nutty aroma
4) Eventually (but we don't always achieve this in the Netherlands) we can process the dry seeds like soy, or roast them for a special surrogate coffee!
Remarkably, it stores nitrogen very actively from the air, so a follow-up crop of leafy vegetables is very successful.

Names:
Latin: Psophocarpus tetragonolobus
Dutch: Vleugelboon
Also known as: Asperge-Erwt
English: Asparagus Pea, Winged Pea, Goa Bean