Pumpkins and Their Edible Relatives

Fruits packed with history, folklore and flavor

Debby Luquette
Adams County Master Gardener

(10/23) Many people I know find fall to be the most enjoyable season. Spring and summer gardens provide brilliant floral displays. Summer is the best time for enjoying fresh corn and tomatoes picked from vines in the backyard. Winter walks display shimmering landscapes of stark beauty in snow and ice with long shadows cast by bare trees. But none of these satisfies like the colors of South Mountain’s forested hillsides and the crunch of an apple from an Adams County orchard. And we cannot escape the pervasive aroma of pumpkin spice wherever coffee and snacks are served.

Pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies and more – these treats have their beginnings in the fruit of the humble Cucurbita moschata, the butternut squash. The butternut squash and the pumpkin, along with the other squashes are all members of the genus Cucurbita, in the botanical family Cucurbitaceae. Botanically, their fruits are pepos – specialized berries. The fleshy ovary wall surrounds the seeds, but without a tough membrane separating the seeds from the flesh, as in an apple or pear.

Trying to tease apart the different squashes we like to grow in the gardens is difficult, even with the help of seed catalogs that list their selection by species as well as varietal names. Pumpkins, summer squash, zucchinis, and delicata squash belong to the species C. pepo, and are closely related to butternut squashes (C. moscata). And there is another species of squash in the mix, C. maxima, which includes buttercup and hubbard squashes, and – you guessed it – the giant pumpkins. The current record for the heaviest pumpkin weighed in at 2,624.6 pounds in 2016 in Belgium!

One thing all squashes have in common is their origin in South and Central America where domestication led to several varieties with edible fruits. Archeological evidence tells us that by 6000 BCE winter squashes and pumpkins were found from southern Chile and Argentina to southern Canada and eastward to the Mississippi basin. Different varieties of C. pepo – pumpkins, scalloped and crookneck winter squashes – arose in different places and Native Americans distributed seeds through their trading agricultural system.

Winter squashes and pumpkins were further modified and diversified by plant breeders over the last couple of centuries. Different varieties of pumpkins now include traits like decorative fruits, good eating, weightiest and even throwing ability (for the pumpkin chunkers). Some squashes were bred to be ‘bush types’ for growing in limited spaces, still others for their ‘keeping’ ability, enabling them to be stored and eaten fresh as late as the following April, sometimes longer.

Pumpkins and winter squash aren’t difficult to grow, but they need space to spread their long vines. While those weighty competitive gourds grow really large with generous applications of water, your average backyard squashes need a steady supply of moisture, too. Heat is no friend of the cucurbits, either, but they perk up again when the summer heat eases. The other thing winter squash and pumpkins need is time! The smaller bush varieties need about 80 days to mature, whereas the vining squashes usually take 100 or more days. If you want to try your hand at winter squashes but don’t have lots of room, trellising the vines gives you a way to confine the vines by growing them vertically. And you can put lettuce, which prefers summer shade, underneath.

Would you consider growing a well behaved, bush type of squash in your flower bed? As crazy as it seems, the right variety of bush squash can add interest to a landscape with its wide, bright, sharply-lobed leaves and large yellow flowers, which are either male or female. You can tell the difference by looking at the flower stem; male flowers have bare stems but female flowers sit on top of their ovaries, which look like a miniature version of the mature fruit.

Pollination of squashes is crucial to the production of good quality fruit. The large flowers attract the big pollinators, especially bumble bees and squash bees, which can handle their large pollen grains. In fact, squash bees are specialists which only visit squash and pumpkins for their supply of nectar and pollen. If your squashes are small and misshapen, the usual reason is poor pollination. The Native Americans cultivated flowers near their Three Sisters gardens to attract pollinating bees to their plantings. Since pumpkins and other squashes were such an important part of their winter diet, pollination of squash flowers was important.

We love fall decorations that include winter crook neck squash, gourds and pumpkins of all sizes. For many families, carving a jack-o’-lantern from a pumpkin has become a fall ritual, and lucky for us, the hollow pumpkins of this hemisphere make the work easy.

In ancient Ireland, on the festival of Samhain, it was believed that otherworldly spirits and the souls of the dead would rise to walk among the living. In order to protect oneself and one’s household from these specters, a turnip was hollowed, a face was carved into it and a candle was placed inside to scare them off. After the druid beliefs gave way to Christianity, Samhain became All Hallows Eve, but folklore lives on. One tale tells of a scoundrel named Jack who tricked Satan, but after dying found his life style barred him from heaven and the devil banned him from hell. He was condemned to eternally roam the world by the light of a lantern carved from a turnip and lit with a coal from hell.

With all the pumpkin varieties out there, my favorite is the Long Island Cheese, an eating variety that is easy to grow, produces well and usually yields enough flesh for two pies. And, if you have six mice and a fairy godmother, you can have a splendid coach until midnight!

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