Pumpkin

• 1. Introduction

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  Pumpkin fragments unearthed in Mexico have been dated to somewhere between 7,000 and 5,500 BC, making the pumpkin one of the oldest cultivated plants on earth. Long before the jack-o'-lantern, long before the Thanksgiving pie, and long before the world's pumpkin harvest reached 34.6 million tonnes in a single year, people in Mesoamerica were already tending these thick-shelled gourds in their gardens. What is a pumpkin, exactly? That turns out to be a harder question than it sounds. The word applies to a sprawling family of squashes from multiple species, in colors ranging from white to deep green to the familiar orange. And behind the name itself sits a story reaching back through French and Latin all the way to ancient Greek. This is a documentary about a plant that defies easy definition, feeds billions, inspired folktales, launched competitive throwing contests, and holds a world record measured in tonnes.

• 2. A Name Without Borders

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  The Oxford English Dictionary traces the English word pumpkin to a 17th-century corruption of the earlier form pompion, itself a word for any edible gourd. That older word traveled through French and Latin before arriving from Greek pepōn. A rival theory takes the name somewhere entirely different: the Massachusett word pohpukun, meaning "grows forth round". According to this account, the Wampanoag people, who speak the Wôpanâak dialect of Massachusett, may have used that word when introducing pumpkins to English Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony, in what is now Massachusetts. The English word squash has a parallel origin, drawn from the Massachusett term askoȏtasquash, or the closely related Narragansett word askutasquash. Researchers have observed that pumpkin, along with related terms like ayote and calabaza, gets applied to a wide range of winter squashes that differ considerably in size and shape. The word tropical pumpkin is sometimes applied specifically to cultivars of the species Cucurbita moschata. This blurry relationship between name and plant runs all the way through pumpkin's history, which is part of what makes tracking that history so interesting.

• 3. Three Sisters and the New World

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  Alongside maize and beans, pumpkins and other squash species form the core of the Three Sisters method of companion planting practiced by many North American indigenous societies. The three crops support one another in the same field, and that practice has deep roots. Within decades after Europeans began colonizing North America, illustrations of pumpkins closely resembling the modern Small Sugar and Connecticut Field varieties were already circulating in Europe. The Connecticut Field pumpkin is still described as one of the oldest pumpkins in existence, and it remains widely used today for autumn decorations and jack-o'-lanterns. The Seminole pumpkin, a landrace of Cucurbita moschata, was cultivated by the Seminole people of what is now Florida; naturalists in the 18th century recorded Seminole pumpkins growing with their vines hanging from trees. The Dickinson pumpkin, whose oblong ribbed fruits can weigh up to 40 pounds, was derived from the Kentucky field pumpkin by Elijah Dickinson when he moved to Illinois in 1835, and Libby's Select, the variety behind most commercially canned pumpkin in the United States, is classified either as a selection from the Dickinson or from the same parent lineage.

• 4. Growing and Pollination

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  Pumpkins are a warm-weather crop, typically planted by early July in the Northern Hemisphere. Soil temperatures at a depth of three inches must reach at least 15.5 degrees Celsius, and the soil needs to hold water well, because both drought and waterlogging can damage the crop. Below 65 degrees Fahrenheit, growth also suffers. Within those conditions, pumpkins are considered hardy. Even heavy damage to leaves and vines tends to spur the plant to grow secondary vines in replacement. Fertilization usually depends on bees, and the native squash bee Peponapis pruinosa historically handled that work across America, though that species has declined, likely in part due to sensitivity to the pesticide imidacloprid. Ground-based bees, including squash bees and the eastern bumblebee, are better equipped to manage pumpkins' large pollen particles. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends one hive per acre, or roughly five hives per two hectares. When bee populations fall short, gardeners may need to hand-pollinate, because inadequately pollinated pumpkins typically begin to develop and then fail to complete growth. Illinois accounts for 41 percent of the entire U.S. pumpkin crop and 95 percent of the portion destined for processing, with most of that production concentrated in five counties in the central part of the state.

• 5. Giant Pumpkins and Record Breakers

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  While Cucurbita pepo pumpkins generally weigh between 6 and 18 pounds, the giants of the pumpkin world belong to a different category entirely. Most record-breaking giant pumpkins are varieties of Cucurbita maxima, developed through the work of botanical societies and enthusiast farmers. The largest cultivars regularly exceed 75 pounds. Howard Dill bred Dill's Atlantic Giant from sources including the Mammoth Pumpkin variety, patented the variety in 1979, and then set a giant pumpkin record in 1980 with a fruit weighing 459 pounds. Big Max, another C. maxima variety hybridized for size during the early 1960s, can exceed 100 pounds and 20 inches in diameter under ideal conditions. In October 2023, the record for the heaviest pumpkin ever weighed was set at 1,246.9 kilograms, or 2,749 pounds. The town of Half Moon Bay, California, hosts an annual Art and Pumpkin Festival that includes the World Champion Pumpkin Weigh-Off. In Salo, Finland, a festival called Pumpkin Weeks, or Kurpitsaviikot, draws tourists every October with thousands of pumpkins of varying sizes alongside carved jack-o'-lanterns.

• 6. Jack-o'-Lanterns and Folklore

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  The carved pumpkin as a Halloween symbol did not begin with pumpkins at all. The practice originated from an Irish myth about a man named Stingy Jack, a soul condemned to wander the earth, and the tradition of carving lanterns for Halloween developed in Ireland, Scotland, and other parts of the United Kingdom using turnips, mangelwurzels, and swedes. Those vegetables remain popular carved lanterns in Scotland and Northern Ireland today. Immigrants arriving in North America found the native pumpkin both more available and far larger than the root vegetables they had carved at home, making it a natural substitute. The term jack-o'-lantern as a description for a carved vegetable lantern does not appear until 1837, and the specific association between a carved pumpkin lantern and Halloween is not recorded until 1866. The British purchased a million pumpkins for Halloween in 2004, reflecting how far the pumpkin-carving tradition had spread. Illinois farmer Sarah Frey, known as the Pumpkin Queen of America, sells around five million pumpkins annually, predominantly for use as jack-o'-lanterns. Beyond Halloween, pumpkins appear in the fairy tale Cinderella as a magical carriage, in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as the headless horseman's substitute head, and in the Oz books as the head of the character Jack Pumpkinhead, whose seeds serve as his brains.

• 7. From Kitchen to Medicine

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  Most parts of the pumpkin plant can be eaten: the shell, the seeds, the leaves, and the flowers. In Zambia, pumpkin leaves, called chibwabwa, are boiled and cooked with groundnut paste as a side dish. Pumpkin flowers are used as garnish and in salads. In a 100-gram amount, raw pumpkin provides 26 kilocalories and delivers 47 percent of the daily value of vitamin A, along with a meaningful amount of provitamin A beta-carotene. The plant is 92 percent water. Pumpkin seeds, also called pepitas, are roughly 1.5 centimeters long, flat, light green, and usually enclosed in a white husk, though some varieties produce hull-less seeds. Roasted, they are a rich source of protein, unsaturated fatty acids, and dietary minerals. Pumpkin seed oil, pressed from roasted seeds, appears red or green and is typically mixed with other oils when used in cooking because of its robust flavor. The Styrian pumpkin of the Styria region produces hull-less seeds that feed a pumpkin seed oil industry in Austria and Slovenia. Native Americans used pumpkins as folk medicine to treat intestinal worms and urinary ailments, and American doctors adopted that remedy in the early 19th century. In Germany and southeastern Europe, seeds of Cucurbita pepo were used as folk remedies for irritable bladder and benign prostatic hyperplasia. In China, Cucurbita moschata seeds were used in traditional medicine for schistosomiasis and for expelling tapeworms. Pumpkin seed meal from Cucurbita maxima and Cucurbita moschata has also been shown to improve egg nutrition, and Cucurbita pepo seed has been used in place of soybean in chicken feed.