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The Wild Gourd of the Ozarks
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11196 |
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NATURAL SCIENCE
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10 / 1993 |
1,582 Words |
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C. Wesley Cowan And Bruce D. Smith
C. Wesley Cowan, curator of archaeology at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, has written extensively about the beginnings of horticulture in eastern North America. He recently coedited The Origins of Agriculture: An International Perspective (Smithsonian Institution Press). Bruce D. Smith is curator of archaeology and director of the archaeobiology program at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. He has published numerous articles about the origins of plant cultivation in eastern North America and recently authored Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America (Smithsonian Institution Press). |
"The frost is on the pumpkin." This phrase aptly describes the waning of summer and the arrival of fall. Countless visions of the season can be conjured, but a favorite revolves around pumpkin pie, baked acorn squash, stewed zucchini, and the myriad miniature gourds that nearly everyone keeps in a basket on the dining room table. Most of us probably know that all these vegetables are related but not how. Where did they come from?
Thanks to a bit of botanical sleuthing, archaeologists and plant taxonomists now believe that a possible ancestor of some of these fall favorites is the newly described Ozark wild gourd (Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera var. ozarkana), a plant that thrives in isolated river valleys of the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks.
The Ozark gourd fits the profile that botanists have long thought should characterize an ancestral form of squashes and pumpkins. It is an aggressive competitor that occupies strands and gravel bars, often climbing 15-20 feet into streamside trees. Vines produce hardball-sized fruits, ivory colored and sometimes striped with green. When dried, they are carried to new habitats by winter and spring floodwaters.
The Ozark gourd can be incredibly prolific; as many as 25 to 30 fruits may grow on a single vine. Each fruit can produce as many as 200 protein-rich seeds. Given these factors, it is little wonder that early human foragers might have found the plant an attractive resource. Over the span of several millennia of experimentation and use, the gourd's genetic makeup might have been altered sufficiently to produce a true domesticate: the modern summer squash.
To quote one of the main characters of the old television series Dragnet, those are the facts, ma'am. But like much police work, solving the mystery of the Ozark wild gourd required the combined efforts of many experts--in this case, archaeologists, botanists, and geneticists.
A Mexican homeland?
Pumpkins, ornamental and bottle gourds, squashes, and virtually all of the edible melons belong to the Cucurbitaceae family. Melons and the bottle gourd were domesticated in the Old World--particularly in Africa and Asia--but the squashes, pumpkins, and ornamental gourds all have New World roots and belong to a single genus, Cucurbita.
Until recently, Mexico has been seen as
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