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["Lynn Wigglesworth" <lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com>]

> English peas are also called sweet peas.  I have not heard them called
> shell peas.

Sweet peas here usually means the pea plants grown only for the flower 
(although I've heard fresh green peas called sweet peas, too). "Shell pea" 
here refers to fresh English peas that you remove from the shell to eat 
(i.e. not snap peas or snow peas). Your pretty little red field pea would be 
considered a bean here...there are hundreds of types of beans. "Bean" in 
this part of the country applies to both the green bean and the dried bean; 
all are Phaseolus, but 'green bean' is usually applied the the type eaten 
green (Kentucky Wonder, etc), although, of course, you can dry them, 
too...then they'd be dried or shell beans (because you remove them from the 
shell, I guess). Then there's wax beans, which people around here call 
"yellow green beans". Go figure. Who would have thought beans could get so 
complicated?

Lynn Wigglesworth
Tioga Co. PA