A Big Red Bean

Some very odd donations arrive in the charity shop where we work. This morning's example was a small polythene bag containing eight of these. I suppose normally we might have consigned them to the bin but I have seen these before, on a tropical beach thousands of miles from here, for I recollect picking them up....

....along the high-tide mark on the beautiful beach at Nyali which this house - which we called the Hoey House - looked out across - see link here.

They're obviously beans, but I never knew to which tree or shrub they belonged, assuming that they had drifted across the Indian Ocean to arrive on Kenya's shores. However, a little research on the internet found that this 6cm diameter 'sea bean' comes from the African dream herb or snuff box plant, Entada rheedii, which grows along many coasts, creeks and rivers in Africa and Australasia. It's from a type of liana with huge seed pods - there's more about it here.

The link is to a shop specialising in the sale of exotic seeds. I wish I'd looked it up earlier as a single bean is on sale for £9. We sold all the beans, with the exception of the one I bought, for £2 only a few minutes after they went on display in the charity shop window. Oh dear!