HelpfulGardener.com

My wife and I recently grew an interesting fruit in our pumpkin patch. At first we thought it might be a rogue Sugar Baby Watermelon (we had tried planting them earlier in the season), but after cutting it open it seemed like a perfect hybrid between a pumpkin and a zucchini, which makes some sense. It came from a pumpkin patch containing Connecticut Field Pumpkins, Big Max Pumpkins, and Acorn Squash. The Acon/Pumpkin hybrid idea had crossed my mind, but we had Croockneck Squashes and Zucchini growing in a raised bed only 100 ft or so from the pumpkin patch. I think it's a Pumpkin/Zucchini hybrid, what do you think?

10/07/2012 edit: Possibly an Acorn Squash hybrid after all!

The flesh and green skin seems a lot like a Zucchini, yet it has a semi-hollow inside that easily scoops out, containing large and small seeds. It also smells like a Pumpkin and has a distinct yellow color around the stem. Check out the photo links below:

[img]https://i1357.photobucket.com/albums/q751/wloucks/pucchini1.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i1357.photobucket.com/albums/q751/wloucks/pucchini2.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i1357.photobucket.com/albums/q751/wloucks/pucchini3.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i1357.photobucket.com/albums/q751/wloucks/pucchini4.jpg[/img]

Edited to add mage codes to display photos in-line. -- applestar

How did it taste?

Where did the seeds come from? The seeds you plant determine what the fruit is. It doesn't matter what is growing around them. Different closely related plants can cross breed, but that only affects the seeds in the fruit and therefore the next generation. It does not affect the fruit that come from the seed you planted.

So yes, it looks a lot like a "squ-unkin" but that must mean you planted squunkin seeds.

or that they were hiding in/on the ground from a fruit that grew last year.

or homemade compost.

Eric

Oh right, the compost! I always get volunteer squashes growing from my compost pile and since I don't let them grow long enough to fruit (where the pile is, is too shady any way), I have no idea if they would turn out to be some kind of wierd cross-breed.

@applestar: Thank you for making the photos appear in my original post. We just tasted it last night. After baking it in the oven it got pretty soft (& delicious with butter!). The skin was easily broken and edible, like other summer squash. My wife describes it as having "the texture of spaghetti squash, but not as stringy, with a slight nutty flavor~ similar to the taste of an acorn squash."

@rainbowgardener: That makes more sense, thank you for explaining.
The plant was growing in a patch of land that I cleared out in Spring; it was previously being used as a scrap wood and metal pile, so I don't think there would be any old dormant seeds hiding out (though it is possible). The pumpkin seeds we planted in the patch were all purchased as seed packets from a store, but the acorn squash we planted we'd hand collected from a squash bought at the grocery store; so that must be it. The zucchini was also purchased as seed packets. So it seems like the thing must be more related to an Acorn Squash than other varieties. That would explain the taste too!

One thing's for sure... I'm saving the seeds and trying to grow it again next year. It's nicely sized for a summer squash and more fleshy and soft-skinned than a pumpkin. It makes me wonder what other tasty hybrids are possible in the wide world of squash.

There certainly are lots of possibilities for cross breeding cucurbitae (squashes, pumpkins, etc). However, your squ-unkin is clearly a hybrid, therefore the seeds from it will not be true to your original. That is whatever is produced from those seeds will be as closely related to this squ-unkin as a child is to its parents, but no more so.

Thus it will be similar (human parents don't suddenly have ape children, though some days we may think so ), but not identical, just as your child is not a clone of you.

Some of my pumpkins this year are that small. But that's not because they are hybrids lol.
Nice one you have there!

I love the pics!!
That is totally awesome, whatever it is! LOL