What’s In A Name? The Story of Squash

So, just how important are squash to our collective food cultures?

Yet again we have Christopher Columbus to thank for introducing the squash to the Old World, when he brought it back from his expedition in 1492. Writing on the history of squash in Vegetables of New York (published in 1928), Professor G.P. Van Eseltine said, ‘The history of the cultivated cucurbita, if written in full, would form a large part of the story of the development of agriculture in the tropics and sub-tropics of both Old World and New.’2

Prior to Columbus’s voyages to the New World, the bottle gourd, Lagenaria siceraria, had been widely grown in the Old World, used both as a receptacle and for its seeds, which are highly nutritious and make excellent oil.

Its flesh was occasionally eaten but was far inferior to the new arrivals from the Americas. However, sixteenth-century botanists confused gourds with squash and made matters worse through incorrect classification and naming that was only resolved some 200 years later.

Early Uses of Squash

The earliest archaeological records of indigenous American tribes show that they were using both gourds and squash primarily as receptacles but also for their nutritious seeds.

Squash and gourds come in a dazzling variety of colours, shapes and textures, thanks to their ability to freely interbreed. However, both species evolved independently and cannot cross with each other.

Neolithic farmers of the New World were able to select from the indigenous wild squash traits that gave them greater size, bigger seeds and, most significantly, sweeter and less fibrous flesh. They either never bothered with further improving the bottle gourd or else it was less responsive to domestication syndrome.

This describes a process by which wild plants acquire traits that make them worth cultivating – for example, loss in part or whole of seed dormancy, which means a crop will have more uniform germination and fruit ripening.

Domesticating Squash

An important element in this first phase of domestication is the loss or reduction in chemical defences that can cause sickness or death. The second phase of domestication, key in the case of squash, exploits these traits to select for increased size of fruit, colour, shape and edible seeds as well as something we value most highly: flavoursome flesh.

Although the juice can be highly toxic, bottle gourds continue to be grown in the New World for their seeds but also as containers and ornaments: definitely not their flesh.

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Notes

2. U.P Hendrick, The Vegetables of New York, vol. 4, (Albany, NY: New York Agricultural Experiment Station, 1928): 3.

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