Hybrid pumpkin plant

This pumpkin plant is producing strange fruit... a mixture of pumpkin and perhaps a watermelon or zucchini or some other thing. The parent of this plant cross-pollinated, so this plant is a hybrid.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• pumpkin
• hybrid
• cross-pollination
• gardening

[destroyahdes]

The leaves are shaped like pumpkins but it has coloring on the leaves like a watermelon. The fruit is very unusual. I wonder what the inside looks like? Do you know where the seeds came from?

[PlantyAbby667]

@destroyahdes The seeds came from a piece of a West Indian pumpkin I bought at the store. The insides and flesh looked and tasted exactly like West Indian pumpkins do. I had someone visit my house who said she's seen such pumpkins before. Maybe it is not a hybrid, but a variety of West Indian pumpkin? I can't tell now.

[PlantyAbby667]

@destroyahdes From a piece of similar type of pumpkin (as far as its flesh) in a grocery store. But I don't remember buying a pumpkin piece shaped on the outside liked that. Most likely what I bought had a smooth surface.

[destroyahdes]

@PlantyAbby667 I'm not familiar with west Indian pumpkins. I'll have to look them up. But they probably are a hybrid. That means that pumpkin was the female and assuming it's crossed with watermelon the male was the watermelon. The fruit will develop normally, but it's the seeds that will show the hybrid traits. That's why this new plant looks funny even though it came out of a normal fruit. The cucurbit family is my favorite plant family.