Pumpkin
orange (yellow, green) winter squash native to North America
A pumpkin is a cultivated winter squash in the genus Cucurbita. The term is most commonly applied to round, orange-colored squash varieties, but does not possess a scientific definition. It may be used in reference to many different squashes of varied appearance and belonging to multiple species in the Cucurbita genus.
"Pumpkin" is sometimes used interchangeably with "squash" or "winter squash", and is commonly used for some cultivars of Cucurbita argyrosperma, Cucurbita ficifolia, Cucurbita maxima, Cucurbita moschata, and Cucurbita pepo.
C. pepo pumpkins are among the oldest known domesticated plants, with evidence of their cultivation dating to between 7000 BCE and 5500 BCE in Mesoamerica. Wild species of Cucurbita and the earliest domesticated species are native to North America (parts of present-day northeastern Mexico and the southern United States), but cultivars are now grown globally for culinary, decorative, and other culturally-specific purposes.
The pumpkin's thick shell encases edible seeds and pulp. Pumpkin pie is a traditional part of Thanksgiving meals in Canada and the United States and pumpkins are frequently used as autumnal seasonal decorations and carved as jack-o'-lanterns for decoration around Halloween. Commercially canned pumpkin purée and pie fillings are usually made of different pumpkin varieties from those intended for decorative use.
Etymology and terminology
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English word pumpkin is a 17th-century corruption of the earlier pompion, denoting any of various kinds of edible gourd.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pumpkin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.