The common bean out of the Americas — two crops, one Iberian doorway

Phaseolus vulgaris was domesticated twice, in Mesoamerica and in the Andes, from wild pools that had parted about 165,000 years earlier. Both reached Europe through Iberia in the sixteenth century, and there they did something they had not done at home: they interbred. European landraces carry three to four times the inter-pool hybrids of American ones - on one count. A second study of 782 accessions puts the figure far lower, and both numbers are here.