Cucurbita pepo
Cucurbita moschata
field pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin/squash
butternut squash, calabaza, crookneck squash, golden cushaw, neck or West Indian or seminole or large cheese or long island cheese or Kentucky field or dickinson pumpkin, Tahitian squash, Tennessee sweet potato
creeping or climbing, rooting adventitiously at nodes, to 10+ m, villous-hirsute with mixture of longer, thick, vitreous hairs with conspicuous cross-walls and puberulent understory of much shorter hairs, without pustulate-based hairs;
tendrils 3–5-branched 1.5–8 cm above base, glabrous, eglandular.
petiole 4–25(–40) cm, villous-hirsute with mixture of longer, thick, vitreous hairs with conspicuous cross-walls and puberulent understory of much shorter hairs, without pustulate-based hairs;
blade sometimes white-mottled abaxially, suborbiculate to broadly ovate, depressed-ovate, or reniform, shallowly 3–5(–7)-lobed, 5–25 × (8–)10–25(–30) cm, broader than long, base cordate, lobes ovate to broadly triangular or broadly obovate, midveins of leaf lobes not distinctly elongate-whitened, margins closely serrate-denticulate or serrulate-apiculate to denticulate or mucronulate, surfaces densely hirsute to hirsutulous abaxially, less densely hairy adaxially, eglandular.
in fruit 5-ribbed, abruptly expanded at point of fruit attachment, hardened, woody.
hypanthium cupulate, 5–8 mm;
sepals narrowly lanceolate, distally foliaceous, 15–25 mm;
corolla yellow, tubular-campanulate, 5–7 cm;
anther filaments glabrous or sparsely puberulent at base;
ovary pubescent.
whitish to cream or light brown with golden-yellow to silvery margins, ovate-elliptic to elliptic or obovate, 8–21 mm, margins raised-thickened, ± undulate, surface ± punctate-sculptured.
evenly light or dark green or cream-speckled to evenly light or dark brown, speckled or not, or wholly white, globose or depressed-globose to ovoid, conic, cylindric, pyriform, or lageniform, 10–40(–120) cm, usually smooth or with rounded ribs, rarely with small, raised, wartlike spots, flesh yellow to light or bright orange to greenish, lightly to very sweet.
= 40.
Cucurbita pepo
Cucurbita moschata
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 moschata is the primary squash of lowland, humid, tropical and subtropical areas throughout the world. It seems likely that it occurs at least as a waif in more areas than indicated in currently available databases of invasive species.
Fruits of Cucurbita moschata, especially the cheese pumpkins, are favorites for making pumpkin pie. Compared to a Halloween “jack-o-lantern” (a “pepo” pumpkin), flesh of a Moschata pumpkin is more richly colored, higher in nutrients and sugars, and has a denser, smoother-grained flesh. The “cheese” name alludes to the pumpkin’s resemblance to a wheel of cheddar.
Cucurbita moschata has sometimes been cited as C. moschata (Duchesne ex Lamarck) Duchesne ex Poiret, based on C. pepo var. moschata Duchesne ex Lamarck, but the epithet appeared first at specific rank, slightly earlier than in the work by Lamarck.
The wild ancestor of Cucurbita moschata is unknown but mitochondrial DNA data combined with other information suggest that it will be found in lowland northern South America (O. I. Sanjur et al. 2002).
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
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