Cucurbita pepo
Cucurbita ficifolia
field pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin/squash
Asian pumpkin, chilacayote, cidra, fig leaf or blackseed squash, fig leaf or Malabar gourd, figleaf gourd, shark fin melon, Thai marrow
prostrate or climbing, often rooting adventitiously at nodes, to 25 m, usually sparsely hirsute with puberulent understory of gland-tipped hairs, sometimes without hirsute overstory, without pustulate-based hairs;
tendrils 3–4-branched 3–5 cm above base, glabrous, eglandular.
petiole 8–20 cm, sparsely hirsute to hispid-hirsute, without pustulate-based hairs;
blade sometimes mottled with silvery green, suborbiculate to ovate or reniform, palmately 3–5-lobed, 11–16 × 15–26 cm, usually broader than long or equally so, base cordate, sometimes shallowly and irregularly toothed, lobes with sinuses shallow or ± 1/2 to petiole, obovate to ovate, depressed-ovate, or triangular, midveins of leaf lobes not distinctly elongate-whitened, margins closely mucronulate to denticulate, surfaces short-villous to pubescent, eglandular.
in fruit 5-ribbed, slightly or not expanded at point of fruit attachment, hardened, woody.
hypanthium campanulate, 5–10 mm;
sepals linear-lanceolate, not foliaceous, 5–15 mm;
corolla yellow to yellow-orange, tubular-campanulate, 6–12 cm (staminate at shorter end of range);
anther filaments sparsely short-villous, hairs viscid-glandular;
ovary densely pubescent.
usually dark brown to black, sometimes whitish, ovate to ovate-elliptic or oblong-elliptic, 15–25 mm, margins raised-thickened and smooth, surfaces smooth.
(1) light or dark green, with or without longitudinal white lines or stripes distally, (2) irregularly, often linearly mottled, green and white, or (3) whitish to cream, globose to broadly ovoid or ovoid-elliptic, (15–)20–50 cm, smooth, flesh usually white, sweet.
= 40.
Cucurbita pepo
Cucurbita ficifolia
Subspecies 2 (1 in the flora).
Archaeological and molecular-genetic research, especially data from mitochondrial DNA and RAPD studies (O. I Sanjur et al. 2002; D. S. Decker et al. 2002b) and earlier isozymic and chloroplast DNA studies (for example, Decker et al. 1993), indicates that Cucurbita pepo in the broad sense includes two lineages: (1) C. pepo in the strict sense, a Mexican lineage of domesticates that differs from plants generally identified previously as C. pepo subsp. ovifera (here as C. melopepo) by a derived molecular feature (a difference in three adjacent base pairs) that occurs also in the C. moschata and C. sororia L. H. Bailey and C. argyrosperma Huber groups, and was shared presumably by the wild ancestor of C. pepo, which is unknown and possibly extinct; and (2) C. melopepo, a lineage of northeastern Mexico and the eastern Unites States in which the three wild varieties (var. fraterna, var. ozarkana, var. texana) and the domesticated variety (var. ovifera) share identical mitochondrial DNA sequences (Sanjur et al.) as well as similarities in isozymes and other kinds of DNA. Domesticates of C. pepo and C. melopepo are independently derived lineages.
Cucurbita pepo subsp. gumala Teppner comprises domesticates from Guatemala and adjacent southern Mexico and apparently is native there (H. Teppner 2000, 2004). The plants have depressed-globose pepos 13–20 cm in diameter with extremely thick rind, ripening orange-yellow, and with orange flesh. Teppner observed that the fruits of subsp. gumala are similar to the ancient ones from Guilá Naquitz cave in Oaxaca.
Cultivars of Cucurbita pepo with edible pepos have been divided into eight groups (H. S. Paris 1986, 1989; see also E. F. Castetter 1925), based mainly on pepo morphology. Pepos of cultivated forms differ from those of their wild ancestors in their larger size and more variable shape, less durable and more varicolored rinds, and less fibrous, nonbitter flesh.
Plants of Cucurbita pepo are likely to be found as non-persistent waifs all over the world, wherever they can be grown in temperate and upland tropical areas.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Cucurbita ficifolia is included here on the basis of two collections from California: one from Ventura County in 1968 from the site of an old habitation at about 50 m; the other from San Bernardino County in 1948 from a wooded area at about 1400 m.
The wild ancestor of Cucurbita ficifolia is not known, but it grows in cool, high-elevation ecological zones and is considered to have originated in South America (M. Nee 1990; O. I. Sanjur et al. 2002), whence the only reliable archaeological records.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
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