My doctor said there’s something unusual about my pulse. I asked him what, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. – a Dad-joke

The word “pulse” has more than one meaning, as do many words. Outside the doctor’s office, and in the garden, the word, which is admittedly pretty old-fashioned, refers generally to any plant in the bean family, and more specifically to dried, mature seeds of any kind of bean.

People have been interested in beans probably since the age of hunter-gatherers and continuing up to now — and with good reason. Members of the bean family (and specifically “pulses,” in the seed sense) are enormously important as food sources, generally rich in proteins, as well as carbohydrates and vitamins.

In fact, I used to teach my biology students that you can be perfectly healthy as a vegetarian, as long as your diet includes beans (and grass grains, as it turns out). This is very important economically, too: beans are much less expensive to produce than meat, which seems to be more of a mainstay for protein in the “civilized” parts of the world.

So, you might want to make sure that your diet includes lots of tasty pulses. Did I tell you where the word “pulse” comes from? I understand that the Latin word puls means porridge — and it’s easy to see how that word evolved into the way we use it, as beans can be a major part of a yummy soup.

Our Mystery Plant — Hyacinth bean, “Lablab,  Lablab purpureus — is a pulse, in the botanical sense. It’s a vine that is widely grown in cultivation as an ornamental. Here it is adorning a fence in my neighborhood; I saw it the other day on my morning walk. This species is a native of Africa and India, and as an ornamental usually acts like an annual.

Each leaf has three leaflets, and flowers are produced on an upright stalk. The petals are a bright, attractive pink, or sometimes white. Very attractive. I’ve seen bumblebees visiting the flowers, and it is said that hummingbirds will, too. Following the flowers, tender green pods (technically legumes, as with anything in the bean family) are formed, each with several seeds.

As they mature and enlarge, these legumes toughen up a bit, and start to turn a wonderful shade of deep purple, just as attractive as the flowers, I think. The cooked young pods are said to be edible, but once they are mature, probably not. The hardened, mature seeds are somewhat toxic, and probably need to be boiled several times to make them safe to eat.

It might be better for you gardeners out there to enjoy this plant visually, and stick to butter-beans for supper. Hey, butter-beans are pulses, too.

Back to gardening. The seeds are easy to find either online or at your garden supply store, and very easy to sprout and grow. (Even I’ve done it.) Treated like annuals, they make a wonderful addition to a fence or tied to a wall.

Now to change the subject a bit. Let me encourage you to vote in the coming election! The only excuse for not doing so is if you don’t have a pulse.

John Nelson is the retired curator of the A. C. Moore Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, in the Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia SC 29208. As a public service, the Herbarium offers free plant identifications. For more information, visit www.herbarium.org or email johnbnelson@sc.rr.com.

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