ID this volunteer squash?
slowjane CA/ Sunset 21June 12, 2014
I've searched and searched images but nothing beats the wisdom here - anyone have a clue?
We moved here a year ago so I don't have historical information past that, but I do know we carved pumpkins out in the yard last fall - so my best hunch is pumpkin? The vine is trailing maybe 6 feet so far.
If it is pumpkin from a dropped seed, will it resemble the carving pumpkin it came from?
Concur : a pumpkin type
Unfortunately since so many varieties of squash cross pollinate so easily, 9 times out of 10 any volunteers will be some strange cross hybrid that can't really be identified.
And if it was hybrid varieties to begin with (say the pumpkin you carved was a hybrid to begin with) then what you end up with is a hybrid of a hybrid (so to speak) since the hybrids don't breed true to begin with in most cases.
Right now it kind of looks like a cross between a zucchini and an 8 ball. :) Could it be some sort of pumpkin? Possibly from the leaf appearance. But it could also be something else entirely and you may never know.
Dave
Okay, then, it will be an experiment. I wonder if most commercially sold Halloween pumpkins are hybrids - my guess is yes. I got ours last year from Trader Joe's....
It must be a serious project to keep plants from cross pollinating on a commercial scale ... does this also mean that there is no such thing as a "wild" pumpkin in the common understanding of "pumpkin" (big, orange, etc) i.e. - squash would almost always cross-pollinate in uncontrolled environments?
The cross pollination affects the seeds, not the fruit from the current year. So, on a commercial scale for producing pumpkins there is no need to prevent cross pollinating.
To save seeds, however, IS quite a process, involving keeping the female flower in a bag, and carefully hand pollinating the morning it opens while making sure no bees get in on the act.
This post was edited by elisa_Z5 on Fri, Jun 13, 14 at 11:23
"It must be a serious project to keep plants from cross pollinating on a commercial scale
If you are producing seeds for sale, yes it is. Often they use row covers and hand pollination.
It's always a shock for novice gardeners who have saved some seeds for next year. They end up with mutts most of the time.
There have been many "mystery squash" posts here in the past and the answers are always the same. Because of hybrids and/or cross-pollination they could be anything. Here are just a few posts:
Not sure what type of squash this is....
Squash lovers: please identify
Mystery Squash
Unusual squash(?)
"squash would almost always cross-pollinate in uncontrolled environments?"
Yep. And there is no way to know what kind of strange things will happen as a result.
Rodney
This post was edited by theforgottenone1013 on Fri, Jun 13, 14 at 10:24