Pumpkins

We are quickly approaching two of my favorite holidays, and they both involve pumpkins!  Everyone knows something about pumpkins from their bright orange color to their unique taste.  Let’s go further and explore some of the many ways this wonderful fruit has impacted our culture.

Pumpkins are a fruit from various species of winter squash, all from the genus Cucurbita.  The type of fruit is called ‘pepo’, which is from the Greek word ‘pepon’ meaning a large melon.  Pumpkins are native to northeastern Mexico and the southern United States.  Pumpkins are one of the oldest domesticated plants, found as early as 7500 B.C.  They are grown on every continent except Antarctica, and they are widely used throughout the world for food, aesthetic and recreational purposes.  About half of the world’s crop is grown in China and India.  The U.S. grows about 2.2 billion pounds of pumpkins each year, comprising less than 4% of the world’s production.

Pumpkins should be planted in late May in our area.  Plants produce both male and female flowers.  Flowers can be fertilized by a wide range of pollinator insects, but historically the plants attract the native squash bee, Peponapis pruinoso or the Eastern bumblebee, Bombus impatiens.  Pollen grains from the plants in this genus are quite large, and can be managed by only a handful of species.  With the decline in the population of squash bees in the U.S., commercial production will use captive honeybees or hand pollination if there are not enough wild bees in an area.

Pumpkins are classified as fruit, the seed bearing structure of a flowering plant.  As they start to grow, they are green and will turn to orange for the same reason green leaves on deciduous trees change to fall colors.  As the amount of daylight begins to decrease in the autumn, chlorophyll production slows and then ceases.  The remaining carotenoids in the skin of the fruit are orange or red or yellow in color and are fully revealed after no more chlorophyll is left.  There are also pumpkin cultivars that have been grown to display other colors including white, red, yellow, green, and blue.  Cultivars with larger sized fruit generally produce 1-2 pumpkins per plant, medium sized fruit plants produce 3-6 pumpkins each and small sized fruit plants may produce 10-12 per plant. 

The largest growing sites in the U.S. are found in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and California.  Illinois produces about 95% of the commercially available pumpkin products in the United States with Nestle’s Morton, Illinois, production plant selling 85% of all pumpkin products under the trade name Libby.  Edible parts of the plants include the shell, seeds, leaves and flowers.  Pumpkins can be boiled, steamed or roasted, and are most often mashed.  Popular pumpkin products include pie filling, spice pumpkin products and seeds, but are also used as dietary supplements by veterinarians, most often fed to poultry in the winter to help maintain egg production.  The original pumpkin pie cooked by colonists consisted of slicing off the top of the pumpkin, scooping out all of the seeds, filling the shell with milk, spices and honey, and cooking it for several hours in hot coals.

While pumpkins are a delicious food, they are also used in a variety of other ways.  “Punkin Chunkin” has been a competitive sport for many years and involves building a device to throw a pumpkin the farthest.  The Guinness world record is held by “Big 10 inch,” a pneumatic cannon that launched a pumpkin 5,545 feet in 2010 in Moab, Utah.  Note that pumpkins that burst in flight are disqualified.

Pumpkin festivals celebrating those who can grow the largest pumpkins are also popular all across the United States.  There will be four competition sites in Illinois this year and you can find all the information at Pumpkin Festivals.   Growers of giant pumpkins have been competing since at least the early 1960’s, and in 1979 in Philadelphia, a Nova Scotia farmer named Howard Dill won with a 438 pounder.  In 2012, the first 1-ton plus pumpkin won the Topsfield, Massachusetts weigh off at 2,009 pounds, grown by Ron Wallace of Greene, RI.  In 2019, the winner was an impressive 2,517 pounds grown by Karl and Beverly Haist in New York.  Don’t plan to enter unless you can top at least the one-ton mark; nothing less will be considered by most festivals this year!

Literature is another place we find many references to pumpkins.  Charles Perrault, a French author, published “Tales and Stories of the Past With Morals” in 1697.  Among the many stories in the work was “Cinderella,” a folk tale about undeserved oppression and reward.  Invited to the royal ball, her fairy godmother provides Cinderella with the means to get there by turning a pumpkin into a beautiful coach.  Another work, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’, published by Washington Irving in 1820, tells the story of Ichabod Crane being attacked on Halloween night by the Headless Horseman who carries a pumpkin, his head, possibly, on his saddle.  And we have all enjoyed waiting for the Great Pumpkin with Linus each year on Halloween night.  As Linus tells us in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” “On Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys for all the children!”

Jack-o-lanterns are an autumn tradition dating far back into British and Irish history.  Their origin comes from an Irish tale about Stingy Jack, who invited the devil for a drink.  But Jack did not want to pay for the drinks, so he convinced the Devil to change into a coin, to be used for pay.  After changing, Jack decided not to use that coin, but to put it into his pocket next to a silver cross that prevented the devil from changing back.  Jack finally freed the devil under the condition that the devil would not bother him nor would he claim Jack’s soul when Jack died.  Soon after, Jack did die, and God would not let him into heaven because of his unsavory ways and the Devil would not let Jack into hell because of their agreement.  Jack was forced to forever wander the dark night, using a carved out turnip with a bright coal to light his way.  He was referred to as “Jack of the Lantern”, soon shortened to Jack O’Lantern.  People would carve scary faces into turnips and large beets to place in their windows to frighten away Stingy Jack’s ghost.  Carried over to the U.S. by colonists, pumpkins were found to make great Jack O’Lanterns.  They are still used today to scare away the evil spirits that roam the autumn nights.