Aquadulce

Aquadulce is the Spanish long-podded broad bean that European gardeners reach for when they want to sow in autumn. It descends from the haba de Sevilla, also called haba de Tarragona, a large-seeded (megalosperma) Spanish landrace traceable to the late Middle Ages; the Aquadulce line entered commerce in the middle of the nineteenth century and was illustrated in Vilmorin's Album Vilmorin in 1871. Its defining quality is that seedlings from an October or November sowing are tough enough to stand through winter frost and crop weeks ahead of spring-sown beans. The widely grown selection 'Aquadulce Claudia' is a refinement of it, and Kings Seeds rates Claudia as slightly more winter hardy than Aquadulce itself. North American catalogues sell it on the same logic, as a cold-hardy fava for fall planting in mild-winter regions and very early spring sowing elsewhere.