Cucurbita fruits come in an assortment of colors and sizes. Roasted honeynut squash section of Cultivated Cucurbita of Canada. Tristemon Scheele 1848, illegitimate homonym, not Raf. Most Cucurbita species are herbaceous vines that grow several meters in length and have tendrils, but non-vining “bush” cultivars of C.

The yellow or orange flowers on a Cucurbita plant are of two types: female and male. The female flowers produce the fruit and the male flowers produce pollen. There is debate about the taxonomy of the genus, as the number of accepted species varies from 13 to 30. The five domesticated species are Cucurbita argyrosperma, C.

The fruits of the genus Cucurbita are good sources of nutrients, such as vitamin A and vitamin C, among other nutrients according to species. The fruits have many culinary uses including pumpkin pie, biscuits, bread, desserts, puddings, beverages, and soups. Cucurbita species fall into two main groups. The first group are annual or short-lived perennial vines and are mesophytic, i. The leaves of Cucurbita moschata often have white spots near the veins. The typical cultivated Cucurbita species has five-lobed or palmately divided leaves with long petioles, with the leaves alternately arranged on the stem. The stems in some species are angular.

All of the above-ground parts may be hairy with various types of trichomes, which are often hardened and sharp. Cucurbita fruits are large and fleshy. The current world record was set in 2014 by Beni Meier of Switzerland with a 1,054. An assortment of fruits of C. Various taxonomic treatments have been proposed for Cucurbita, ranging from 13 to 30 species.

The taxonomy by Nee closely matches the species groupings reported in a pair of studies by a botanical team led by Rhodes and Bemis in 1968 and 1970 based on statistical groupings of several phenotypic traits of 21 species. Seeds for studying additional species members were not available. The full phylogeny of this genus is unknown, and research was ongoing in 2014. All species of Cucurbita have 20 pairs of chromosomes. When there is more pollen applied to the stigma, more seeds are produced in the fruits and the fruits are larger with greater likelihood of maturation, an effect called xenia. The most critical factors in flowering and fruit set are physiological, having to do with the age of the plant and whether it already has developing fruit.