Pam Moore wrote:

I sow mine in pots, on end, scar up, so the root and shoot can go the
way they want to, but whichever way you sow them, they will go the
right way.

One of the reasons I asked was from what happened to some of my runner
beans last year. I sowed them individually in pots, and most of them
germinated really quickly and came up just as you'd expect. But a
couple took a while longer, and when they came up, they looked
freakishly twisted, with some thick white shoots that looked like roots
right near the surface - as if the roots and leaves had got twisted
together before they're worked out which way was up! I was tempted to
turn them out just to see what was going on down there, but I relented.

I lost track of where they went when I planted them out, but I imagine
they grew fine like all the others eventually, but it did make me
wonder.

Peter