One of the first cultivated plants in the world, the bottle gourd was mostly dried and used for containers and utensils rather than for eating. Squash thrived in the climate of the Mediterranean region, along with other heat-loving crops, such as peppers, tomatoes, maize, and beans.Īlthough Cucurbita species bore novel fruits from the New World, the bottle gourd ( Lagenaria siceraria) is native to the tropics of Africa and was traded and shared across Europe for thousands of years. Most ships docked at Spanish ports, and from there the seeds were flung far and wide over vast trade routes. They derived the word “squash” from “askutasquash,” the Narragansett word for “green thing eaten raw.” The explorers took squash seeds back to Europe when they returned home.

The first explorers in the Americas saw a wide variety of squashes growing with maize and beans. They were roasted whole in a fire sometimes their rinds were cut into long spiral strips, dried, pounded, and woven into mats. The fall-harvested squashes had thicker rinds, making them good for winter storage. Squash slices and blossoms were dried for winter eating. The small, early fruits were steamed or boiled, sometimes with squash blossoms and animal fat. Squash became a main dietary staple of the indigenous people of the Americas. Later, they were cultivated for their nutritious seeds and then for their flesh. Most likely, ancient squashes, with their hard rinds, were first grown for drying and for use as storage containers, bowls, utensils, and fishing floats.

(For more information about the Three Sisters growing technique, read the final installment of this series in our Winter 2017/2018 issue.) The Three Sisters crops are thought to have reached the northeast corner of what would become the United States by about 1300 A.D. The maize provides a structure for the beans to climb, and the beans provide their own nitrogen, which both the maize and the squash benefit from. The squash shades the ground from heat and acts as mulch to suppress weeds and to conserve moisture. The trio, called the “Three Sisters,” is a symbiotic growing system in which each plant benefits from the others. Over thousands of years, indigenous farmers domesticated versions of the three wild ancestors and planted them together, replicating the way they occurred in nature. In Mesoamerica, wild Cucurbita species grew in the fields with beans and teosinte (corn’s ancestor). This species has also been found at archaeological sites in Missouri (4000 B.C.) and Mississippi (1400 B.C.), which leads some archaeologists to hypothesize that it was domesticated at two separate locations. The oldest remains were found in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico and were dated to approximately 8750 B.C. pepo is thought to be one of the first domesticated species. ficifolia is commonly called the figleaf gourd, and its place of domestication was somewhere in Mesoamerica or South America the oldest remains were found in Peru.Ĭ. It includes the green-striped cushaw and the silver-seeded gourd.Ĭ. argyrosperma is a species of winter squash that’s believed to have originated in southern Mexico more than 7,000 years ago. This species includes butternut squash and golden cushaw.Ĭ. to 3500 B.C., were found in northwestern Mexico. The oldest remains, dating from 4900 B.C. moschata is from Mesoamerica or South America. Of the dozens of wild cucurbits, five were domesticated:Ĭucurbita maxima includes many of the winter squashes (buttercup, banana, and Hubbard) and originated in South America.Ĭ. The earliest known evidence of their domestication dates back nearly 10,000 years ago, which predates the domestication of both beans and maize. The ancestral species of today’s cucurbits are native to North and South America and were present long before the arrival of humans. Like all of our modern food crops, squash ( Cucurbita spp.) once grew in the wild. The main ingredient in both traditional pumpkin pie and the ubiquitous zucchini bread is the result of millennia of selection and breeding. The fourth and final installment will appear in our Winter 2017/2018 issue. Part 1 is Ancient Beans for Modern Gardeners and Part 2 is A-Maize-ing Maize: The History of Corn. This article is Part 3 of Nan Fischer’s four-part series about Three Sisters crops.

Figleaf gourd candy