Yard-Long Bean

Also Chinese long bean, long bean, snake bean; dau gok chang dou, and variations (Chinese); asparagus bean (a name that also refers to other vegetables), bodi and boonchi (West Indian)

Yard-long beans are not simply long green beans. They do not taste like green beans or behave like them in the pan (where they are more likely to be cooked than the pot). They are a subspecies of southernpeas harvested young. In a few areas of Asia they are allowed to mature (and produce peas similar to their black-eyed sibling in the American South), but they are usually cultivated for their pencilslim, flexible, lengthy pods, which are generally picked at about 1½ feet. (The Latin subspecies translates as 1½ feet; Vigna refers to a 17th-century scientist—not a vine; unguiculata means clawed, but I don’t know why that comes up.)