My Aunt would grow green beans and let them mature on the plant, then pick them after the pods dried and shell the beans out. She would have a winter's supply of small white dried beans not unlike Great Northern beans.

Nope definitely green beans like the ones you get from a can, they are the immature sprouts of the same species.

The first paragraph of the article reads:

>Phaseolus vulgaris, the common bean,[3] is a herbaceous annual plant grown worldwide for its edible dry seeds or green, unripe pods.

The words "green, unripe pods" contains a link to the Wikipedia article on green beans.