Welcome, Jake! Maybe you could post a photo of the fruit so we can take a look. Thank you for offering to share the seeds. ‘Magic’ squash always welcome in my garden.
Here are several pictures of the magic cushaw fruits. They’re quite variable. I haven’t eaten one yet.
Thanks for posting the photos. It has the coloration and stem of a moschata. I did a quick search online because I’ve only seen ‘cushaw’ used with argyrosperma. According to Merriam-Webster, it can refer to C. argyrosperma and certain varieties of C. moschata:
A little more sleuthing is probably required…
That makes sense, thanks for looking into it. In that case, I won’t be able to share any argyrosperma seeds. But I’ll have moschata seeds to share. I planted the GTS moschata together with about 8 other varieties and they’ve done extremely well. A little out of control, frankly. I could harvest seeds to share this fall, but I won’t know yet about the keeping qualities. Or I could wait until early next year to select seeds. Growing season is long here, and I could be harvesting squash until mid November or beyond. This is not a great place to select for plants that reach maturity fast.
Glad to hear that your moschata have done well! They would be a welcome addition to our next GTS moschata mix. But there’s no rush for you to get seeds to us. We accept seeds year-round now, so feel free to store and eat the fruit at your usual pace. Ideally, seed-saving will become a reflex every time you cut open a squash and decide it’s a keeper!
I have been studying this species in academic literature while saved seeds from the exemplary cushaw I posted about in the spring are maturing fruit out in the garden. I am posting in part to say that I believe academics would classify the cushaw I posted as as Cucurbita argyrosperma ssp. argysperma var callicarpa, Hopi type or Taos type.
This Hopi/Taos type has long been known to have brown seeds resembling C. maxima. The corky peducle transitioning into corky ridges on that end is very pronounced with this variety, but other argyrosperma do have corky peduncles.
Callicarpa is the same subspecies and variety as the green and white striped cushaws that have more typical light colored seeds with a border, lighter flesh, and shorter storage time. The common green and white striped cushaws here have a peduncle more like moschata, hard with defined flares.
Whether or not there are maxima genes in these cushaws, they continue to impress me and seem to be growing well in my garden. I have ideas that this will be an important cushaw lineage in my future growing.
I have been getting training from a couple of growers and a produce market owner who also is a seed saver and vendor.
In their experience, the long storage characteristic is correlated to lignified rind and a pattern of obviously raised ridges on the peduncle end. Those ridges blend into warts for some long storage types.
In my observations so far, the peduncles of the fruits that I’m being told will store a long time also tend to be more corky, less regularly shaped, more maxima in appearance.
My source says that I should expect the two fruit in the foreground to last the longest. Whereas the two fruit farther back will probably start to rot in December or January. The fruit which will not store as long has softer skin, no raised ridges on the peduncle end of the fruit, and a harder, more moschata type peduncle.
That matches my much less experienced observations about the varieties of cushaw that I think would be classified as summer squash if they were being grown more widely for food rather than decoration. Fast growing with lots of seeds and mild flesh, but doesn’t store too long. Ergo summer squash. Before this season I had been saving seeds from cushaws fitting that description.
Until I opened the first of these cushaws, I have never encountered one with such rich color or taste. The cushaws I had grown and eaten before had flesh that ranged from a significantly lighter yellow to off-white.
This is not so dark as the ubiquitous baby carrots that are in all of the grocery stores around here. But it is a rich golden color.
I have adjusted my winter squash cushaw standards accordingly.
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I didn’t think to take a photo of this fruit before I cut it up and used some. This cushaw weighed almost 15 pounds. The photo only shows half of the original amount of the neck.
I discarded the seeds from this one. It’s texture was similar to a zucchini or marrow that has been let fully mature. This is a little sweeter than a mature zucchini, but the flavor and texture are unremarkable.
The biggest issue is that soft spots are already forming only two months after harvest. I am willing to believe this would make a good summer squash, but it doesn’t fit into the parameters of my cushaw project.
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In another species of squash, these two might each have a variety name. The variety on the left is not a long storing type even though it does have the lignified skin. After a month or two it’s developed a large soft spot.
If the flesh were particularly flavorful I might still keep seeds. But this one is nothing special on flavor either. It’ll go into the compost pile.
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We had a drought that ended with a flood. I’ve been getting some orientation on cushaws from a local source who gave me this one because they know I’m interested. After the flooding rains it split open but has healed. I’ve never seen one with a huge wound like this. I’m guessing it won’t last as long as it normally would, but I’m intrigued to open it up and see what the eating quality is like.
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From the little reading that I’ve done, it seems there are types of argyrosperma grown specifically for their seeds (bland flesh) and others grown for the flesh (cushaw type). It sounds like you’ve grown both types and are now focusing on the tastier, longer-storing ones. Do the tasty ones have fewer seeds compared to the bland ones? Just wondering if there might be a reason to grow the bland ones.
One of my references paints a picture about the breakdown of cushaw types. Their argument is that the types have a strongly geographic distribution that dates back to ancient times. If I understand what this chapter is saying, the kinds I am most interested in – long keeping, relatively sweet – were developed in the northernmost parts of the traditional cushaw range. The other types are apparently more common farther south.
Therefore the cushaw type a farmer was growing was more likely determined by where they were than the purpose they were must interested in using a squash for.
Excerpt from Systematics and Evolution of a Domesticated Squash, Cucurbita argyrosperma, and Its Wild and Weedy Relatives in Biology and Utilization of the Cucurbitaceae (2019)
Ethnobotany
The pattern of variation in traits of the fruits and seeds of subsp. argyrosperma can be explained, in part, by the geographic pattern of human use. In southern Mexico and Guatemala, human selection in subsp. argyrosperma has emphasized seeds rather than fruits; both var. stenosperma and var. argyrosperma are cultivated principally for seed production (29, 35). The seeds are often extremely large, particularly those of var. argyrosperma landraces from the states of Veracruz and Puebla in Mexico, and, in comparison to the diversity of fruit shapes, colors, and sizes observed for var. callicarpa in the north, the southern domesticated varieties exhibit less diversity in fruit types. The fruit flesh tends to be stringy and is usually discarded or used as animal feed (29, 35, 49). The seeds are roasted and consumed, whole or peeled, as a snack (pepitas) or are ground and used in sauces, such as pipián or mole verde. In addition to production for home consumption, seeds of both varieties are produced on a commercial scale and sold in large volume in markets. The most common terms for these varieties in Mexico and Guatemala, pipiana and pepitória, are a reflection of their selection for seed consumption. Further south in Central America, selection of subsp. argyrosperma has been predominantly for consumption of the immature fruits as a vegetable. There, landraces usually produce long-necked fruits, which is the shape generally preferred when fruits are harvested at an immature stage (29).
In the northern part of its range, subsp. argyrosperma has been selected simultaneously for a wide variety of purposes. Variety callicarpa is usually consumed in three main forms: seeds, mature fruits, and immature fruits. The consumption of flowers and stem tips, or use of the thick, hard fruit rinds as receptacles (14) is only occasional (28, 29). Seeds are both consumed locally and sold in markets. As a probable result of selection for human consumption, the flesh of mature fruits of var. callicarpa is generally of higher quality, i.e., much smoother in texture and deeper orange, than that of var. stenosperma and var. argyrosperma. In northwestern Mexico, long-necked fruits of var. callicarpa are typically preferred for consumption as an immature vegetable; globose, flattened forms are said to be preferentially used for animal feed, indicating that several different fruit shapes may be consciously selected in the region (28).
The great variety of fruit shapes of var. callicarpa is analogous to that found in the landraces of C. moschata; however, the range of shapes for C. moschata far exceeds that of C. argyrosperma, since the latter fruits basically vary in terms of relative extension of a thickened neck (28, 29). Two of the common names of var. callicarpa in Mexico, tamala'ota (a reference to smooth-textured flesh) and calabaza pinta (striped squash) refer to fruit characteristics. Other common terms for var. callicarpa in Mexico include arota, tecomata, calabaza caliente (squash of the hot lowlands), guayana, sopoma, and temprana (early). In a few localities, different terms are used to discriminate different forms within var. callicarpa, e.g., forms with thick rinds vs. forms with thin rinds. Yet, for the most part, throughout the geographic range of subsp. argyrosperma as a whole, terms for landraces serve to distinguish C. argyrosperma from other cultivated species of Cucurbita (28, 29).
The flesh of the fruits of subsp. sororia and var. palmeri is not consumed because of the presence of high concentrations of the intensely bitter cucurbitacins (33). However, interviews with rural Mexicans revealed a number of folk uses, including 1) the consumption of seeds locally as snacks or, at times, sold in markets, or use as a vermifuge for intestinal worms or as a biocide to purify water; 2) use of the saponin-containing, suds-producing fruit pulp for washing animals or for washing and removing stains from clothing; 3) use of the intact rinds as receptacles; and 4) use of the bitter pulp to wean babies or young animals from breastfeeding (29, 31). Informants generally describe the folk uses of the wild taxa as being more prevalent in the past, but no geographic pattern for uses was discerned (29).
The most prevalent names for both var. palmeri and subsp. sororia in western Mexico are chichicayota, or the related terms, chicayota and calabacilla de cayota (or coyote). In eastern Mexico, the terms morchete or calabacilla are used for subsp. sororia. In the southern part of the range, subsp. sororia is commonly known as calabacilla de caballo (of the horse), or ayote de caballo (ayote is the generic term for cultivated squash in Central America). Calabacilla is a diminutive of the Mexican term for cultivated squash, calabaza, and is used widely throughout Mexico to refer to various wild Cucurbita species (29).
Origin and Evolution
Although of limited extent, archaeological evidence supports the theory that C. argyrosperma was domesticated in southern Mexico. The earliest date for subsp. argyrosperma is about 5200 B.C., which was determined from specimens excavated from the Tehuacán Valley in Puebla and Oaxaca (15). The next dates for subsp. argyrosperma are some 3000 to 6000 years later and are from sites in northeastern and northwestern Mexico and southwestern United States: 200-900 A.D. at the Ocampo site in Tamaulipas (56); 700 A.D. at the Río Zape site in Durango (9); and 380-1340 A.D. in caves in Arizona and New Mexico (14). These studies indicate that in the northern Mexican sites subsp. argyrosperma either was introduced thousands of years later or, if contemporary with C. moschata and C. pepo, was substantially less abundant. According to Whitaker (51), C. argyrosperma is absent from all other major archaeological sites in Mexico, United States, and South America where specimens of other Cucurbita species, dating to over 8000 B.C., have been.
As a bonus not worth its own post, I also appreciated this description of the results of a comparative taste test of winter squash held many years ago in Illinois that included cushaw candidates. This is a separate reference.
From: Cucurbita mixta, Pang. Its Classification and Relationships
Hugh C. Cutler, Thomas W. Whitaker
Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1956), pp. 253-260 (8 pages)
A test of flavor involving about 85 kinds of pumpkin and squash, grown near Chicago, was conducted by Cutler and Rhodes (unpublished data). They found that well-ripened Japanese Pie and some strains of Green Striped Cushaw, both varieties of C. mixta, ranked close to the top five best-flavored squashes. The best quality squashes are generally varieties of C. maxima. However, C. maxima is not well-suited for warm summers, as its soft stem and peduncle are quickly attacked by squash borers (Melittis satyrinformis Hbni.). In contrast, varieties of C. mixta perform well under high temperatures and are resistant to squash borers. While their flavor is almost as good, the fruits also have a storage life comparable to most varieties of C. maxima.
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I don’t know about you but those traits they are desribing sound a lot like a C. moschata x C. maxima landrace that we now call a new species Cucurbita angyrosperma. I’m just thinking, why couldn’t the ancient plant breeders have also came up with the same idea to Cross Cucurbita spp. too? I wonder which C. moschata & C. maxima they used to make C. angyrosperma (The old ancient species may simply not exist no more). Or… it could be the other way around, when did C. moschata show up? There are no Documented wild species of C. moschata, only close affinity to C. angyrosperma thus suggesting domestication from other species (But what was the other wild species that made C. moschata happen?).
C. moschata has the Summer climate adapted traits, along with hard peduncles but some C. angyrosperma have cork-like Peduncles, a trait only found in C. maxima. Plus the very good flavors suggest C. maxima traits as well. I need to try a Cushaw squash to see, as I can tell the subtle traits between species (Like some C. pepo have sweet Seed Stings, most C. maxima do not). it be interesting to see where C. angyrosperma falls into, does it have bitter seed strings?
That is very intersting, I’ve noticed C. ficifolia to be quite soapy in texture, does it also have sapponins too? I never knew Cucurbita can produce saponins too?
Also another thing I forgot to mention, just look at what Wild C. maxima fruit look like.
The fruits look a lot like C. angyrosperma with those patterns but also a little like C. ficifolia. Plus you can even see the white specks in the leaves too, something a lot of C. moschata & C. angyrosperma cultivars have too!
Also look at the flowers of wild C. maxima.
There is also relatively low Genetic Diversity within C. angyrosperma compared to other Domesticated Squash species. C. angyrosperma being of hybrid origin would also explain alot because ever since that “assumed” ancient hybridizaion event occured, it continued to hybridize/stablized with it’s own limited gene pool, instead of constantly puling new genes from it’s ancestors or other cucurbita spp. (In other words, it’s an ancient Landrace that got heirloomized/Bottlenecked. A lesson for Modern Landrace Gardeners, to always have new genes flow through your landrace)
What do you think?
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Came across this article which has a nice figure comparing wild vs domesticated argyrosperma squash.
The variation in the seed coats of the domesticated varieties is pretty remarkable.
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There is also relatively low Genetic Diversity within C. angyrosperma compared to other Domesticated Squash species. C. angyrosperma being of hybrid origin would also explain alot because ever since that “assumed” ancient hybridizaion event occured, it continued to hybridize/stablized with it’s own limited gene pool, instead of constantly puling new genes from it’s ancestors or other cucurbita spp.
My imagined history for cushaws draws on a research paper that I believe is arguing that what you say is possible, and worthy of further genetic research. In other words, an ancient hybridization between wild Cucurbita argyrosperma subsp. sororia and prehistoric domesticated C. moschata was consistent with the available genetic research, in the sense that it was a possibility allowed by the limited data currently available.
The domestication of Cucurbita argyrosperma as revealed by the genome of its wild relative. 2021.
The incorporation of domesticated loci between C. argyrosperma and C. moschata through introgression may have been an effective way for Mesoamerican cultures to domesticate multiple Cucurbita taxa. This hypothesis is supported by the significant amount of ABBA sites shared between the genomes of C. argyrosperma and C. moschata. However, this hypothesis needs to be further addressed using population-level data of C. moschata with other wild and domesticated Cucurbita species.
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Indeed! It’s a small world as I cam across the exact same study. I noticed the Seed Edges are almost winged? I know moschata have tight seed edges. I’ve also noticed some of the Seeds look like maxima as well! The wild seeds look like Fat pepo seeds. The wild fruits look something like Ficifolia fruits.
Do you think any C. maxima genetics got involved? I don’t know how else did C. angyrosperma get C. maxima traits. Could it also be another possibility limited by current data?
To me, the first of the orange flesh, sweeter winter argyrosperma I saw reminded me of maxima squash. But that may be because I’m not as familiar firsthand with (successfully) growing moschata so I wouldn’t have thought of moschata first.
Interesting, I’d love to taste it. I’ve eaten lots of different moschata varieties from the grocery store so I kind of have a taste for them I recognize. I’ve never tried an angyrosperma but tried plenty of Grocery Store maxima & pepo.
Regardless I recognize the fruit, peduncle & seed traits of each species.
I think you’ll find this Cucurbita phylogenic Tree useful.
What stood out to me was how Close Phylogenically C. moschata and C. angyrosperma are, as well as C. lundelliana is Phylogenically inbetween C. moschata & C. pepo.
Oh I also forgot to show you this one.
Did you notice anything else interesting?
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