COLUMN | Milkweed + Honey: The great pumpkins

At a recent gathering, someone mentioned a decorative pumpkin would be the wrong type for baking into a pie, as the flavor would be off. Another voice piped up, confused and rather skeptical: “There’s more than one kind of pumpkin?”

This question befuddled me, as I am the type of person to review, highlight, and tab seed catalogs as if they were my doctoral dissertation. The spring Territorial Seed Company catalog had a selection of about 15 varieties. Every corn maze has a kaleidoscope of decorative squash ready to frame you in an Instagrammable selfie. Had this person never seen the “~*autumn fun*~” Pinterest board of a suburbanite in a giant plaid scarf circa 2014, with 47 cheap DIY ideas featuring trendy Cinderella pumpkins painted white or quirky warty pumpkins with googly eyes added? Haven’t they seen a festive cairn of multi-sized gourds on a neighbor’s front steps?

I suppose most people don’t think too hard about plants — or Pinterest circa 2014 — though, so it’s an understandable question. So let me be the Santa Claus of Halloween and say: Yes, Virginia, there really is more than one kind of pumpkin.

Dust off your taxonomy homework from middle school, and let us contextualize. In the great kingdom of Plantae, there is a family called Cucurbitaceae, which has entirely too many vowels, even for Latin. I prefer to refer to it as the cucurbits. This family has many cousins, including cucumber (who would have guessed?), melons, and loofah (yes, your sponge is a dead squash). The genus we’re concerned with is Cucurbita, which houses squashes and gourds. Summer squash grows faster, is usually softer and needs to be eaten relatively quickly once harvested. Winter squash have a longer growing season, firmer rinds and store for much longer in cool, dry conditions. When you enjoy roast zucchini, butternut squash soup, or pumpkin pie, you’re partaking in Cucurbita.

All these plants are annual vines. Like potatoes, tomatoes, and corn, they seem to have originated in Central and South America. Indigenous peoples have cultivated squash for thousands of years, making them one of the oldest crops. Traditionally, squashes, maize, and beans have been planted together in the Three Sisters method to increase the health and productivity of all.

Not all squash are pumpkins, but all pumpkins are squash. In fact, “pumpkin” is not a specific species so much as a catch-all term for certain cultivated varieties (cultivars) of various squash, sort of like how “melon” isn’t any one plant but rather a genre of fruit. “Pumpkin” can mean different things in culinary and colloquial uses. Depending on who’s counting, at least several dozen squash varieties, or up to a few hundred, can be considered pumpkins.

The Platonic ideal of a pumpkin may be round and orange, but you’ll find many shapes, colors, sizes, and textures under the umbrella. The most pumpkiny-looking pumpkin is the field pumpkin, which is what your grandma carved into a jack-o’-lantern and what Linus and Sally wait amongst on Halloween Night, hoping for a sighting of The Great Pumpkin (taxonomy unknown). They’re regular-degular, medium-sized orange fellows. Sugar pumpkins, meanwhile, are the classic pie choice, as they are sweet and smooth.

Further confusing the matter, many of the big berries with which we decorate our homes in the fall (because, yes, the fruits of Cucurbita are botanically berries) are gourds, not squashes. What’s the difference? Gourds refer to inedible or unappetizing fruit used ornamentally, while squashes are usually grown for culinary use. While scientists, chefs, and seed companies may have strict definitions, common folk often use them interchangeably and may refer to members of both categories as “pumpkins.” Basically, when a normie puts any old fruit on their stoop, a linguistic fairy godmother transforms it into a pumpkin. Bippity-boppity-boo!

All that to say: There’s more than one kind of pumpkin and even more than one way to define “pumpkin.” It contains multitudes. It is a fruit of many faces, a discourse unto itself, a multiverse on a vine.