Now that it’s October, the pumpkin worship can begin, which is only fitting since they are a delight to behold all season long.
I will be doing a small series of pumpkin related posts to help us all enjoy the well rounded appeal of my personal favourite fruit.
Yes, notice I said fruit, and no it’s not a mistake.
Pumpkins are of the family Cucubitaceae and the genus Cucurbita which includes all varieties of winter & summer squash, gourd and pumpkin.

According to The Perfect Pumpkin by Gail Damerow  “… a pumpkin is not actually a vegetable but a fruit, and a berry at that…” this is because pumpkins (like berries) develop from a single pistil of a flower and has no core or stone. The species of pumpkin that we all recognize as our big beautiful orange jack-o-lanterns and pie pumpkins is the C. pepo.
C. maxima are those gorgeous white pumpkins that make carving jack-o-lanterns as skulls so easy.

Now you have some pumpkin trivia to impress your friends with!
Check back on the blog for more in the Pumpkin Palooza series.

If fresh meat be wanting to fill up our dish
We have carrots and pumpkins and turnips and fish;
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon;
If it was not for pumpkins, we should be undone.
				17th century unknown Plymouth Colony poet