Is a jack-o’-lantern a kind of squash?
A long green zucchini, a tan butternut, a big orange carving pumpkin. They look nothing alike, and we call some of them “squash” and some “pumpkin.” Are they really different plants? And why does Florida plant squash in the middle of winter?
The University of Florida’s Vegetable Production Handbook starts its cucurbit chapter with a list of crops and their scientific names. Zucchini is Cucurbita pepo. Yellow summer squash — “crookneck and straight-neck yellow squash” — is Cucurbita pepo too. And for pumpkin, the list says: “jack-o-lantern is C. pepo.” So a zucchini, a yellow crookneck and a carving pumpkin are the same species. The list has more surprises: butternut squash is Cucurbita moschata, and so is the “Tropical pumpkin (calabaza).” And it adds that “some processing pumpkins are C. maxima and C. moschata” — the same species names it gives for winter squash and butternut. So the words “squash” and “pumpkin” are names people use for the fruits. They do not sort the plants into separate species.
Basis: University of Florida IFAS Extension, Vegetable Production Handbook of Florida, “Chapter 7. Cucurbit Production” (HS725/CV123), section “Botany and Planting.” Quotations unchanged; the scientific names are as listed there.
The same chapter has a table of planting dates for each part of Florida. For squash: North Florida “Feb–Apr; Aug–Sept,” Central Florida “Jan–Apr; Aug–Sept,” and South Florida “Aug–Mar.” So in the north and center of the state there are two squash planting seasons a year, one in late winter or spring and one at the end of summer. In South Florida, one long season runs from August right through the winter. Pumpkin, in the same table, gets one short window: “Early July” in North Florida, “Mid-July” in Central Florida and “Early August” in South Florida.
Basis: University of Florida IFAS Extension, “Chapter 7. Cucurbit Production” (HS725/CV123), Table 1 “Planting dates for cucurbits.” Quotations unchanged.
The squash quiz shows Florida with the largest squash-acre figure USDA printed. Could the long planting calendar be part of the reason? Maybe being able to plant squash at more than one time of year adds up to more acres. Maybe Florida squash fills a gap in winter, when it is too cold to grow squash outdoors in many other states. But the handbook does not say why Florida’s figure is the largest, and USDA’s line does not say when in the year the squash was harvested. These are this site’s own guesses — the reason is still a mystery.
※ A hypothesis is an idea that isn't proven yet.
📊 Sources for the rankings mentioned in this note (links to the original data and retrieval dates) are on each quiz page below.