Old Cloud Bean

Chiloé, the misty island off southern Chile, is home to some of the richest bean and potato diversity on earth, kept alive by small farms that never stopped saving their own seed. Old Cloud is one of those beans: a climber with white seeds washed in gray and violet, as if each one had a little weather inside it.

Tomás Ñancupil’s grandmother grew it on poles of native bamboo and told him that no two cloud beans are alike. He has looked for forty harvests and has not found a matching pair.

My grandmother said no two cloud beans are alike. Forty harvests later, I have not found a pair.

Only four growers in the network keep it, and the island’s damp summers suit it better than anywhere else we have tried. It is at risk, and it is also, by general agreement in the library, the most beautiful seed we hold.