Calabash

• 1. Introduction

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  A calabash gourd grown in Taylorsville, Kentucky, in 2001 weighed 111.5 kilograms. That single fruit hints at the range of Lagenaria siceraria, the vine known as the calabash or the bottle gourd. Its fruits can be huge and round, small and shaped like a bottle, or slim and serpentine, and some stretch past a metre in length. Fresh from the vine, the fruit has smooth light green skin and white flesh.

  Behind this one plant sit several puzzles. Where did it first come from, and how did a vine of the Old World end up growing in the Americas? Why does one species serve as a vegetable in some kitchens, and as a drum, a ladle or a drinking cup in others? And what could turn a fruit that is normally safe to eat into something dangerous in a glass of juice?

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• 2. A Borrowed Name

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  English took the word calabash from the French calebasse, which came from the Spanish calabaza, meaning gourd or pumpkin. The Spanish word has pre-Roman roots, traced to calapaccu, in which the element cal means house or shell. That ancestry makes it a doublet of carapace and galapago. Cousins of the word turn up in other languages, including carabassa, cabaza, cabaça and caravazza, and some of them mean pumpkin or even orange colour.

  The plant answers to many other names. Bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, New Guinea butter bean, Tasmania bean, zucca melon and opo squash all point to the same vine. It belongs to the family Cucurbitaceae.

  Crescentia cujete, the calabash tree, causes occasional confusion. It is unrelated to the vine, yet its hard, hollow fruits are also made into utensils, containers and musical instruments. Anyone who says calabash may therefore mean either plant. Only the vine is native to tropical Africa and cultivated across the tropics.

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• 3. Across Oceans

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  Gourd remains recovered in China and Japan date to between 8,000 and 9,000 years before the present. Africa has told a thinner story, despite decades of careful archaeobotanical research. Its earliest record is an 1884 report of a gourd taken from a 12th Dynasty tomb at Thebes. That tomb dates to about 4,000 years ago. Genetic and archaeological evidence together suggest two separate acts of domestication, with Asia first and Africa more than 4,000 years later. The bottle gourd was also among the first cultivated plants grown mainly to make containers rather than food.

  A report from Zimbabwe in 2004 added a twist. Stands of the plant found there may be true source plants rather than merely domesticated stands. Their fruit has thinner walls, and once dried it would not have survived the rigors of long journeys as a water container. The tough, waterproof wall of today's gourd may therefore reflect selection over a very long history of domestication. The plant was eventually domesticated in southern Africa.

  The deepest mystery lies across the Atlantic. Bottle gourds were being grown in the Americas more than 8,000 years ago, and nobody could easily explain how an African or Eurasian species got there. One early idea had the fruit drifting from Africa to South America. In 2005 a group of researchers proposed another route. They suggested the gourd was domesticated before food crops and livestock, and that native Paleo-Indian hunter-gatherers carried it into the New World at the end of the ice age, as they did with dogs. Their genetic study of archaeological samples seemed to show that American gourds were closer to Asian variants than to African ones.

  In 2014 a more thorough study overturned that theory. Researchers examined the plastid genomes of a broad sample of bottle gourds. They concluded that North and South American specimens were most closely related to wild African variants. Those gourds could have drifted over the ocean several or many times, as long as 10,000 years ago.

  Polynesian specimens carry genetic markers pointing to hybridization between Asian and American cultivars, so the gourd's travels were never a single voyage. Gourds were cultivated in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas for thousands of years before Columbus arrived in the Americas. In Europe, Walahfrid Strabo, who lived from 808 to 849, was an abbot and poet from Reichenau and an advisor to the Carolingian kings. He discussed the gourd in his Hortulus as one of the 23 plants of an ideal garden.

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• 4. Fast Growth, Bitter Risk

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  A grower can start a bottle gourd by sowing seed directly or by transplanting seedlings that are 15 to 20 days old. The vine wants well-drained, moist soil rich in organic matter, a warm and sunny position, and shelter from the wind. It needs plenty of water through the growing season.

  Nine metres is how far a stem can reach in summer, which is why a pole or trellis must be solid. The plant also grows in a pot, and it can spread over a trellis or a roof. In rural areas many houses with thatched roofs are covered by the vines. Planted beneath a tall tree, a vine may climb all the way to the top.

  Farmers who want more fruit sometimes cut off the tip of the vine when it reaches 2 metres. That forces the plant to produce side branches, and the side branches bear the flowers that become fruit.

  The first flowers open about 45 days after sowing, and they bloom white and at night. Male flowers sit on long stalks called peduncles. Female flowers have short ones, with an ovary already shaped like the future fruit. Sometimes a female flower drops off without growing into a gourd because pollination failed. The likely night pollinator is a kind of moth, and where none visits the garden, hand pollination solves the problem. The pollen grains measure around 60 microns.

  The first crop is ready within two months. With enough nutrients, each plant can yield one fruit a day for the following 45 days. Yields run from 35 to 40 tons per hectare in a season of three months. A gourd picked young goes to the kitchen as a vegetable, while one left to mature is dried for use as a utensil, a drink container or an instrument.

  Cucurbitacins give the cucumber family its bitter taste, and gourds contain them like their relatives. These tetracyclic triterpenoid compounds are cytotoxic at high concentration and could cause stomach ulcers. In extreme cases, people have died from drinking gourd juice.

  The fatal cases usually involve juice that drinkers described as unusually bitter. In three of the lethal cases, the victims were diabetics in their 50s and 60s. In 2018 a healthy woman in her 40s was hospitalized with severe reactions after drinking the juice. She died three days later from complications. The plant is not normally toxic when eaten. Excessively bitter gourds come from improper storage, such as temperature swings or high heat, and from over-ripening.

  Boiled calabash is 95% water, 4% carbohydrates and 1% protein, with negligible fat. A 100 gram reference amount of the cooked fruit supplies 10% of the Daily Value of vitamin C and no other micronutrient in significant amounts. Even so, in India the juice is traditionally considered to have medicinal properties and to be very healthy.

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• 5. Kitchens Worldwide

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  In Korea, the inner flesh of the gourd has traditionally been eaten as a namul vegetable, and the outer shell cut in half to make bowls. Fresh flesh that is scraped out, seeded, salted and squeezed to draw out moisture is called baksok. Scraped and sun-dried flesh is called bak-goji, and cooks soak it before stir-frying. Soaked bak-goji is often simmered in sauce or stir-fried before going into japchae and gimbap. Raw baksok is sometimes seasoned to make saengchae.

  In Japan, the gourd is commonly sold as dried, marinated strips known as kanpyō. They are an ingredient in makizushi, or rolled sushi. Southern Chinese cooking uses the calabash in a stir-fry or a soup. In Central America, toasted seeds are ground with rice, cinnamon and allspice to make one type of the drink horchata.

  In Burma, the fruit is popular, and the young leaves are boiled and eaten with a spicy, fermented fish sauce. Pieces of the fruit can be coated in batter and deep fried into fritters, which are eaten with Burmese mohinga. In the Philippines, the gourd is known locally as upo. It goes into soups such as tinola and into pancit noodle dishes.

  Vietnam treats the calabash as a very popular vegetable. Cooks put it in soup with shrimp, meatballs, clams, crab, or fish such as freshwater catfish and snakehead. They also stir-fry it with meat or seafood, add it to hotpot, and use it as a medicine. Americans have called calabashes from Vietnam opo squash. The shoots, tendrils and leaves of the plant may be eaten as greens too.

  India holds the longest list of dishes. A popular north Indian dish is lauki chana, made with chana dal and diced gourd in a semi-dry gravy. Maharashtra has a similar preparation called dudhi chana, and the skin is used for a dry, spicy chutney. In Assam it is eaten with fish curry. In Andhra Pradesh, where it is called sorakaya, it turns up in a tamarind pulusu, a curry with milk and spices, and a lentil pappu. West Bengal is known for lau chingri, a dish of bottle gourd and prawn, and Bengali cooks also use the edible leaves and young stems. In Gujarat, a savoury cake called handvo is made mainly from the gourd, sesame seeds, flour and often lentils. Telangana serves lauki kheer, a dessert of grated gourd, sugar and milk, on festive occasions. In Karnataka, where it is called sorekayi, it is made into palya, into the stew sambaru, and into crispy dosé for breakfast.

  In Bangladesh, where the fruit is called lau, it is served with rice as a common dish. Nepal's Madheshi southern plains also make halva and khichdi from it. In Pakistan, the calabash is cultivated on a large scale because the fruit is such a popular vegetable. Sri Lanka cooks it with rice to make a variety of milk rice, and also in white curries with coconut milk.

  In southern Italy and Sicily, the variety Lagenaria siceraria var. longissima goes by the names zucca da vino, zucca bottiglia and cucuzza. Cooks add it to soup or serve it with pasta. Around Palermo, a traditional soup called Minestra di Tenerumi is made from the tender young leaves with peeled tomato and garlic. Sicilian growers, both professional and in home orchards, mostly raise the plant for those leaves, treating the fruit almost as a secondary product. The Italian diaspora grows it too.

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• 6. Resonant Gourds

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  Across West Africa, dried calabashes become instruments in many forms. The Ṣẹ̀kẹ̀rẹ̀, a Yoruba instrument, works like a maraca. The kora is a harp-lute, the xalam or ngoni a lute, and the goje a traditional fiddle, and all make use of the gourd. Beneath the balafon, the West African marimba, calabashes serve as resonators.

  The sacred Gamba of the Serer ethnoreligious group of Senegambia is beaten when a Serer elder dies. The usual funeral regalia follows, to send the elder to the next life. In Sierra Leone, the shegureh is a women's rattle and the balangi a type of balafon, and both are made with calabash. The Fulani, Songhai, Gur-speaking and Hausa peoples sometimes simply hollow and dry a large calabash and strike it as percussion.

  In India, the gourd resonator is called a toomba. The sitar, the surbahar and the tanpura, called tambura in the south, may have one at the end of the strings table. On the large Saraswati veena, the toomba may not function acoustically at all, but it is kept for its balance. The rudra veena and the vichitra veena carry two large calabash resonators, one at each end. The Gopichand, used by the Baul singers of Bengal, is made entirely from calabash. Buddhist and Jain sages also use the practice.

  These toombas come from special cultivars originally imported from Africa and Madagascar. They are grown mostly in Bengal and near Miraj, Maharashtra. The gourds are valuable and carefully tended. Growers sometimes give them injections to stop worms and insects from boring holes while they dry.

  In China, the hulusi is a flute made from the gourd. Gourds were also grown inside earthen molds to take on imprinted floral or arabesque designs. Molded gourds were dried to house pet crickets, since the texture of the gourd suits the insect's sound much like an instrument.

  In Hawaii, a dried ripe gourd becomes the ipu heke, a double gourd drum, or simply the ipu, in ancient and contemporary hula. The Māori of New Zealand grew several cultivars for set purposes, including ipu kai for food containers and tahā wai for water. They saw the gourd as a representation of Pū-tē-hue, one of the offspring of Tāne, their god of forests. Gourds also make taonga pūoro, among them the flutes called ororuarangi and kōauau ponga ihu and the shakers called hue rarā and hue puruwai.

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• 7. Symbols and Stories

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  In many African legends, the calabash, often called simply a gourd, is presented as a vessel for knowledge and wisdom.

  The húlu, as Mandarin Chinese calls the calabash, is an ancient symbol of health. Doctors in former times carried medicine inside it, and it was believed to absorb negative, earth-based qi that would otherwise harm health. It is also a traditional Chinese medicine cure. The bottle gourd belongs to the Eight Immortals, and above all to Li Tieguai, who is linked with medicine. His gourd was said to hold a remedy that cured any illness and never emptied, and he gave it to the poor and needy. Folk myths add that spirals of smoke rose from it, showing his power to set his spirit free from his body. The gourd is also an attribute of the deity Shouxing and a symbol of longevity.

  At Rosh Hashana, Sephardic Jewish culture calls for eating the gourd. It is called Qaraa, which in Hebrew means torn, and it symbolizes the tearing apart of enemies who may attack.

  Because the gourd is watertight, it was often used as a container to ship seeds during the transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved people also used it to carry seeds for planting in plantation fields. On plantations holding enslaved African Americans, the calabash symbolized freedom. The song "Follow the Drinking Gourd" alluded to this, referring to the Big Dipper constellation that guided the Underground Railroad.

  In Hawaii, the word calabash names a large serving bowl set on a buffet table or in the middle of the dining table. It is usually made from hardwood rather than from the gourd. The bowl gave rise to terms such as calabash family and calabash cousins, describing an extended family grown up around shared meals and close friendships.

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• 8. Vessels and Odd Uses

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  Across West Africa, hollowed and dried calabashes are a typical household utensil. They clean rice, carry water and hold food, and smaller ones serve as bowls for drinking palm wine. In South Africa, communities such as the Bapedi and the AmaZulu use them as drinking vessels and to carry food.

  Erbore children in Ethiopia wear hats made from the gourd to shield themselves from the sun. In Nigeria, some motorcyclists have worn a calabash as an imitation helmet in an attempt to get around helmet laws. Makers also use the gourd for puppets. South Africa's FNB Stadium, which hosted the 2010 FIFA World Cup, is known as The Calabash because its shape takes inspiration from the gourd.

  In Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and southern Brazil, dried gourds are carved into mates, the traditional container for the caffeinated, tea-like drink brewed from yerba mate. The word comes from the Quichua mathi, and the drink itself is also called mate. In Peru, decorators use a technique called burilado to make mate burilado. Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador also use gourds for medicinal purposes. The Inca culture applied symbols from folklore to gourds, and the practice is still familiar and valued.

  In the Philippines, dried gourds are one common material for the traditional salakot hat. In 2012, Teófilo García of Abra in Luzon received the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan, the National Living Treasures Award, from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. He is an expert artisan who makes the Ilocano tamburaw variant using calabash. He was cited for practising and teaching the craft as intangible cultural heritage.

  Hindu ascetics called sadhu traditionally use a dried gourd vessel called the kamandalu. In parts of India, a dried, unpunctured gourd serves as a float, called surai-kuduvai in Tamil, to help people learn to swim in rural areas. Among some New Guinea highland tribes, men use the calabash as a penis sheath. Along the upper Congo River, the gourd is traditionally used to give enemas. A hole at one end lets the gourd be filled, and resin attaches a hollow cane to its neck.

  American consular reports from the early 20th century said that calabash pipes were commonly used in South Africa for smoking tobacco. Smokers said the gourd gave a special softness of flavour that other materials could not duplicate. A meerschaum lining was standard, though tin lined the low-grade models. The typical shape is recognized, theatrically, as the pipe of Sherlock Holmes. Yet Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who invented the character, never mentioned Holmes using one. Stage actors preferred it because they could balance it better than other styles while delivering their lines.

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