9 Creepy Halloween Tales & Traditions Pumpkins are a member of the gourd family, which includes cucumbers, honeydew melons, cantaloupe, watermelons and zucchini. These plants are native to Central America and Mexico, but now grow on six continents—all but Antarctica.

Where are pumpkins originally from?

Archaeologists discovered the oldest domesticated pumpkin seeds in the Oaxaca Highlands of Mexico. Pumpkins are believed to have originated in Central America over 7,500 years ago.

Where do pumpkins grow wild?

This group of a little over a dozen species includes the squashes, pumpkins, and certain kinds of gourds. They all originally grew wild in the tropical and subtropical Americas. Five of the species were domesticated and represent some of our oldest New World crop plants.

Where do pumpkins not grow in the world?

Antarctica is the only continent on which pumpkins can not grow. There are 800 pumpkin varieties, of which “only” around 200 are edible.

Is a pumpkin a gourd?

The thing we call a pumpkin is, in fact, a type of squash. But it's also a gourd, mainly due to the fact that it's used as both an ingredient and as a decorative piece. Here's the gist of what you should know: Many squashes are gourds. But not all gourds are squashes.

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39 related questions found

Is a pumpkin a melon?

The Melon Family, Cucurbitaceae, is a plant family commonly known as melons, gourds or cucurbits and includes crops like cucumbers, squashes (including pumpkins), luffas, melons (including watermelons).

What animal spreads pumpkin seeds?

Squashes and pumpkins don't have giant seeds that can only be dispersed by large animals; they tend to have hundreds of small seeds perfectly suited to dispersal by anything from a mouse to a deer.

Did mammoths eat pumpkins?

According to studies, some 12,000 years ago, pumpkins and related gourds weren't as tasty as it is now. ... Mammoths would eat the gourds and pass the indigestible seeds out in their faeces. The seeds would then be plopped into whatever habitat range the mammoth was roaming in, complete with fertilizer.

Are pumpkins from Mexico?

The quintessential symbol of autumn, pumpkin can be found in six continents around the world – but its true home is Mexico. Calabaza is a pre-Hispanic crop that dates back more than 7,500 years.

Who brought pumpkin to India?

Food historian K.T. Achaya writes that pumpkins are a part of our food from ancient times, and were grown on the banks of rivers in village outskirts. Chinese traveller Xuan Zang, who visited 110 of the 138 kingdoms in every part of India between 629 and 645 AD, mentioned pumpkin, ginger, mustard and melon.

What does a Mastadon eat?

Mastodons were herbivores . Unlike mammoths, whose ridged molars were used for grazing on grasses, mastodons' teeth were used for clipping and crushing twigs, leaves and other parts of shrubs and trees. Most of the plants they ate were ones that grew near swamps and wet areas in woodlands.

Why did woolly mammoths go extinct Reddit?

There were multiple factors that led to the mammoths extinction. Climate change, arctic cyclones, small population sizes, and possibly human hunting.

Are pumpkins 90% water?

Pumpkins are 90 percent water. Pumpkins are fruit. Eighty percent of the pumpkin supply in the United States is available in October. In colonial times, Native Americans roasted long strips of pumpkin in an open fire.

Is pumpkin a veg?

A pumpkin, from a botanist's perspective, is a fruit because it's a product of the seed-bearing structure of flowering plants. ... Because pumpkins are less sweet and more savory from a culinary perspective, we categorize them as a vegetable.

Is strawberry a berry?

Berries are not all tiny, and they're not all sweet. Surprisingly, eggplants, tomatoes and avocados are botanically classified as berries. And the popular strawberry is not a berry at all. ... A strawberry is actually a multiple fruit which consists of many tiny individual fruits embedded in a fleshy receptacle.

Are pumpkins going extinct?

A new paper published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the modern pumpkins and squash we have now are the survivors of those ancient fruits that avoided extinction by becoming domesticated by humans.

Do wild birds eat pumpkin?

Birds love all kinds of seeds, pumpkin included, so you could save the seeds and put them in your feeder. ... You can help smaller birds by breaking them up a bit before you put them out.

Do birds eat the insides of pumpkin?

After you've spooked the neighbours with your ghoulish gourd, you can hang up half the carved pumpkin as a temporary bird feeder, putting seeds and fat inside it. Birds will eat the pumpkin, too, so you can also just cut it up and put it out on your bird table.

Can you eat gourds?

Gourd Edibility – Are There Ways to Eat Gourds? The flesh won't kill you and probably has some nutrient benefits just like squash. If you wish to attempt the dish, select young fruit that hasn't fully ripened and is not dry. You can prepare it just like you would pumpkin, by paring away the rind and removing the seeds.

Can you eat a raw pumpkin?

Although most people prefer eating them cooked or roasted, you can also eat pumpkin and pumpkin seeds raw. Still, key differences set apart raw and cooked varieties, especially in terms of taste, texture, and nutritional value.

Are bananas berries?

It turns out that blackberries, mulberries, and raspberries are not berries at all, but bananas, pumpkins, avocados and cucumbers are. ... So what makes a berry? Well, a berry has seeds and pulp (properly called “pericarp”) that develop from the ovary of a flower.

Do mammoths still exist?

The woolly mammoth (M. primigenius) was the last species of the genus. ... Until recently, the last woolly mammoths were generally assumed to have vanished from Europe and southern Siberia about 12,000 years ago, but new findings show some were still present there about 10,000 years ago.