Origin of the Giant Pumpkin

Facts from the original

• Thomas C. Andres is an Honorary Research Associate at the New York Botanical Garden.
• Three record-breaking pumpkins were on display at the New York Botanical Garden in October 2010.
• The heaviest displayed pumpkin is not only the heaviest fruit ever grown but the heaviest fruit in the plant kingdom.
• The species scientific name Cucurbita maxima says it all.
• Andres works at the Garden with Michael Nee on the taxonomy of genus Cucurbita.
• Cucurbita includes a little over a dozen species: squashes, pumpkins, and certain gourds.
• All Cucurbita originally grew wild in the tropical and subtropical Americas.
• Five of the species were domesticated and are some of the oldest New World crop plants.
• Italy not only lacked tomatoes before Columbus, it had no zucchini.
• Wild Cucurbita fruit are like a baseball in size, shape, and almost hardness.
• Wild Cucurbita often grow in flood plains and float during floods, but only downstream.
• A widely held theory says wild Cucurbita are anachronisms left from the Pleistocene with extinct dispersal agents.
• Possible dispersers included giant ground sloths, toxodons, gomphotheres, and mastodons.
• These megafauna went extinct during the Late Pleistocene, around 10,000 years ago.
• The extinctions came soon after humans crossed the land bridge from Asia into the Americas.
• The new migrants abandoned hunter-gatherer life, became sedentary, gathered in larger groups, and relied on agriculture.
• Early farmers shaped wild Cucurbita, selecting for palatability and size plus secondary traits like softer rinds and various shapes and colors.
• By the time of the European Conquest, squash of up to 200 lbs (90 kg) were common in South America.
• Today's World Record-holder weighs 1,810.5 lbs (821.23 kg).
• Plants had to be moved out of the tropics: tropical season is long but days are short and large fruits face many pests and diseases.
• At our latitude fruits can grow quickly during the long summer days.
• C. maxima fruits from South America reached New England and Europe in the 1700s.
• Selective breeding aimed at larger fruit began in earnest a little over a hundred years ago when more diversity allowed different cultivars to be crossed.
• In 1893 a 365-pounder from Ontario grown by William Warnock was exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair.
• In 1900 Warnock took the prize at the World's Fair in Paris with the first 400 lb pumpkin.
• For the next 70 years little changed in this maximum weight.
• In the 1970s and 80s records started being broken when Howard Dill of Nova Scotia bred the 'Atlantic Giant' pumpkin.
• 'Atlantic Giant' is the basis for all giant pumpkins today.
• It has been known since at least William Warnock's time that only one fruit per vine should be allowed to ripen for maximum size.
• Many other improvements concerning soil, leaves, and fruit treatment are still being discovered and tweaked.
• Best cultivation practices are a constant source of discussion and debate among giant pumpkin growers.
• The final ingredient in growing a record-breaking pumpkin is luck.
• Gravity has taken its toll on many giants, which can literally be crushed by their own weight like a beached whale.
• Great care must be taken to prevent the sun from overheating one side of the fruit and causing an explosion.
• In 1996 the milestone of the first over-1,000-pound pumpkin was reached; there were two that year.
• Since then hundreds of pumpkins have exceeded 1,000 pounds.
• There obviously is a weight limit, but Andres declines to guess what it is.
• Prize-winning growers say a one ton (2,000 lbs) pumpkin will not only happen soon but that they are actively working on that goal.
• Graphing record-breaking pumpkins each year and extrapolating to 2,000 pounds predicts the achievement around the year 2014.
• Andres suggests a weight that year of 2,014 lbs would be most appropriate.
• The displayed pumpkins were to be cut open at the end of October 2010 to extract the seeds.
• The post appeared in the Programs and Events and Science categories on October 26, 2010.
• Commenter Ruth Kassinger praised the story on plants people don't often think about.
• Commenter Steve praised the article for telling the history of giant-plant growing.