Short answers, pulled from the story.
Phaseolus vulgaris is the common bean, a herbaceous annual plant in the legume family Fabaceae, native to the Americas. It is one of the world's most widely grown food crops, with global dry bean production reaching 28 million tonnes in 2022.
Raw kidney beans contain phytohaemagglutinin, a toxic lectin concentrated especially in red kidney beans. Eating as few as four or five raw, soaked kidney beans can cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea within one to three hours.
The US Food and Drug Administration recommends soaking dry beans for at least five hours in water, discarding that water, then boiling the soaked beans for 30 minutes. Slow cookers operating at around 80 degrees Celsius are not hot enough to fully destroy the toxin.
The common bean was domesticated independently in two regions. Large-seeded varieties appear in the Peruvian highlands dating to 2300 BC, while small-seeded varieties were found in Mexico dating to 300 BC, giving the species two distinct gene pools.
In 1999, U.S. Patent No. 5,894,079 granted POD-NERS, LLC exclusive rights to import and sell yellow beans in the United States. The patent was rejected after reexamination in 2008, nine years after it was issued.
Pope Clement VII received white beans as a gift in 1528 and they thrived. In 1533 he gave a bag of those beans to his niece Catherine as a wedding present when she married Prince Henri of France, along with the county of Lauragais, whose county town Castelnaudary is now synonymous with the white bean dish cassoulet.