Week 34: Cucurbits, Marge Piercy, Padgraig Regan

Fig. 1. “Courd, Courge, Der Kürbiss.” Eugène Grasset and M. P. Verneuil. La plante et ses applications ornementales. Paris, France: Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 1896. Plate 14.

Waxing Gibbous Moon - 5 Days to Full; 30 Days to Fall Equinox.

Headnote#

To untangle the messy world of squashes and melons, I will be spending the next three weeks zooming in on some of our favorite summer delectations, moving from the broad gourd family (Cucurbitaceae) to the distinctive melon-and-cucumber genus (Cucumis) and, finally, to the wholly separate watermelon species (Citrullus lanatus).

The cucurbits are a messy family despite being domesticated approximately 11,000 years ago across Asia, Africa, and the Americas (ask them about their transatlantic and trans-Siberian journeys). Cucurbitaceae contains approximately 100 genera and nearly 1,000 species distributed around the world and coming in many surprising variations. For example, there are the trombone-shaped heirlooms and the spongy luffa/loofah genus; there is even a squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium) that builds up immense pressure before launching its seeds up to 12 meters through the air. While a variety of gourds and melons were first cultivated in Asia and Africa, all “true” squashes—those in the Cucurbita genus—originated in the Americas, where they have been nurtured as part of the three sisters and carefully preserved by seed keepers for thousands of years.

Amidst this diversity, many of our most familiar crops are drawn from just one species, Cucurbita pepo, home to both summer and winter squashes in all their multiplicity. On the summer side: zucchinis and marrows, straight necks and crooknecks and roundeds, scallops and pattypans, cousa and tatumeheirlooms, striped and speckled and hybrid gradients, and yellows and greens and grays and goldens! The abundance can be overwhelming, as my fridge experienced this past month—and as Piercy and Regan document in the readings below. And then in winter: acorns, delicatas, spaghettis, and sugar and field pumpkins. However, autumn and winter also bring notable members of Cucurbita moschata (butternut, specialty pumpkins, etc.) and Cucurbita maxima (Hubbard, kabocha, and friends).

Poison also lingers in the mix. Like the butterfly weed, cucurbits produce bitter, toxic steroids as a defense mechanism. These appropriately named cucurbitacins have been bred almost entirely out of domesticated squashes, although cross-pollination with a wild or ornamental relative can reawaken the ancestral pathway, producing a fruit capable of inducing toxic squash syndrome (nausea and hair loss, oh my!). Even environmental stressors, such as drought or excessive heat, can lead to elevated toxin levels in a squash, though this is more rare and typically more mild in effect. Thankfully, poisonous cucurbits are so bitter that humans rarely manage to eat them in dangerous quantities. Keep that in mind if a squash ever puckers your lips.

Errata

In last week’s post regarding the AD 36 meteor logs from Édouard Biot’s 1841 catalog, the poetic phrase “a vast migrating crowd” was highlighted in relation to the Perseids. While Biot calculated this event as June 27, a landmark 1958 recalculation by astronomers Susumu Imoto and Ichiro Hasegawa revealed a translation error in the months. The “migrating crowd” event actually occurred on August 30 and was likely a minor stream outburst such as the Aurigids. The true, historic first record of the Perseids belongs to the earlier entry on that page, which Biot misdated to February 9, but actually occurred on July 17.

Fig. 2. “Fruit Shape of Each of the Eight Cultivar Groups of Cucurbita Pepo.Proximal (stem) end is at top, distal (blossom end at bottom.” Harry S. Parris. “A Proposed Subspecific Classification for Cucurbita-Pepo.” Phytologia 61.3 (November 1986: 133-138), 136.

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Readings#

1. With a suave reptilian glitter
   you bask among your raspy
   fronds sudden and huge as
   alligators. You give and give
   too much, like summer days
   limp with heat, thunderstorms
   bursting their bags on our heads,
   as we salt and freeze and pickle
   for the too little to come.

Marge Piercy. From “Attack of the Squash People.” 1978. Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy. New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.#

2. 2

   Courgettes are a type of squash: their flowers can be male or female, but both wear skirts of yellow taffeta. An arrangement of various small squashes can make an excellent alternative to flowers as a centrepiece for the table at an autumn dinner-party.

   3

   You could also try working pumpkin into your menu, or emphasising the inversion by serving courgette flowers stuffed with soft goat’s cheese & coated in tempura. Have you ever considered taking a cookery class as a way of making new friends?

   4

   The streaks of yellow-green on the bottle-green colour-field of the courgettes recall the ‘zip-line’ paintings of Barnett Newman. In contrast, the turban-squash is surely the product of Joan Mitchell. The butternut represents Rothko at his most luminous.

   5

   I steam the ribbons of courgette with salt & black pepper; what comes to mind is vermicelli, or the hagfish’s classification as vermiform. Yes, I realise there’s more to life than perfectly describing the perfect squash, but I can’t imagine what that might be.

Padraig Regan. From “Notes on Various Squashes.” The Poetry Review (Autumn 2017).#

Fig. 3. “67. 18 Juin 1771.” Antoine Nicolas Duchesne. The Essai sur l’Histoire Naturelle des Courges. 1876. Ed. Harrys S. Parris. The Drawings of Antoine Nicolas Duchesne for His Natural History of the Gourds. Paris, France: Publications scientifiques du Muséum, 2007.

Supplementum#

• Hanno Schaefer. Cucurbit Website. Version 1 (January 2020).

• Guillaume Chomicki, Hanno Schaefer, and Susanne S. Renner. “Origin and Domestication of Cucurbitaceae Crops: Insights from Phylogenies, Genomics and Archaeology.” New Phytology 226.5 (2020): 1240-1255,

• W. A. Batson, Ed. The Cucurbits Illustrated: Fiftieth Anniversary Number. Waterloo, Nebraska: The J. Robinson Seed Co., 1937.

• Harry S. Parris, et al. “First Known Image of Cucurbita in Europe, 1503–1508.” Annals of Botany 98.1 (July 2006): 41–47.

• Gourd-Vine (Firm). Gourd-Gardeners! Are You Searching for This Address? : Send for Gourd Seed, Ornamental Gourds, Dried Gourds, Craftsman Gourds, and the First Gourd Book. Vernon, Connecticut: The Gourd-Vine, 1940 [?]. From The Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection, National Agricultural Library, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Fig. 3. Quegourdes de turquie (left), Quegourdes (centre) and Concombres(right). Paintings from the Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne (1503–1508). Rpt. Harry S. Paris, et al. “First Known Image of Cucurbita in Europe, 1503-1508.” Annals of Botany 98.1 (July 2006): 41-47.

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✦ From the Earthly Book of Hours ✦#

• I added a button and instructions on the menu bar explaining how to save the project to your phone or computer as a web app.

• Didn’t have time to finish proofreading the site, but I am beginning to cook up a print edition—which is how this project initially started.