Description Ornamental Vine, Hyacinth Bean Hyacinth Bean is an annual vine that is native to Africa, India and Indonesia where it is an important food crop. The vine can grow up to 20 feet in a season and produces flower spikes of pink, white, purple and magenta flowers. The flowers have a lovely sweet fragrance which attracts hummingbirds and butterflies and are followed by burgundy colored seed pods that are as ornamental as the flowers. The plant was introduced into Europe before the 1600s and became a favorite of Thomas Jefferson’s at Monticello. Joseph Breck in his 1851 book on American flower gardening, Breck’s Book of Flowers, describes the Hyacinth Bean Vine as, “A fine, tender annual climber, growing from eight to fifteen feet ina season. Treatment very much like the common bean. Flowers in clustered spikes. There is a variety with white flowers.”
