Warts, Ribs and an Empress

Halloween offers the opportunity for “normal” people to take on new forms, be it a Ninja Turtle, spooky ghost or an even spookier presidential candidate.  The holiday’s official horticultural ambassador, the pumpkin, is also available today in many forms beyond the standard orange globe.  Farmers grow triple the acreage of Cucurbits nowadays than they did 30 years ago, attempting to fulfill our desires for the weird and wonderful.  Here are just a few that have caught my eye. 

Warts, at least on pumpkins, are hot.  The ‘Warty Goblin’ sitting on my front porch is both cute and ugly, having an orange body splotched with bright green warts (top specimen in photo).  This hybrid usually weighs in between 8 and 20 pounds, is designed to be a good keeper and sports a strong stem, or “handle.”  ‘Knuckle Head’ is vibrant orange, rounded in form and freckled with orange warts.  These fruits average 12 to 16 pounds.  While it may seem that warty pumpkins must be a modern oddity concocted in a laboratory test tube, they’ve actually been around for centuries.  Also on the porch sits ‘Red Warty Thing,’ a vibrant red-orange specimen covered stem to stern in a multitude of lumps (on right in photo).  This Thing was introduced back in 1897 by the James J.H. Gregory & Sons Seed Company of Marblehead, MA, and was the result of a cross between and ‘American Turban’ and ‘Hubbard.’  Mr. Gregory, an entrepreneurial farmer, plant scientist and seed salesman, developed the most-famous and original ‘Hubbard’ way back in 1844.  These squashes have history.

 If green and orange warts are not your thing, how about grayish bumps?  ‘Marina Di Chioggia,’ a sea pumpkin of noble Italian ancestry, can range in color from aquamarine to blue-gray-green to very dark green, and has the surface texture of a heavily pimpled teenager.  Gourmands say its sweet flesh is among the best for a wide variety of dishes.  Of a gray-blue hue, and trading warts for heavy vertical ribbing is ‘Jarrahdale.’  This is an heirloom from western Australia, but I can attest it will grow well in the Hudson Valley, too.  New to me this year is ‘Triamble,’ another wonder from down under, a gray three-lobed pumpkin whose shape might qualify it for a contemporary art gallery.  Reportedly it can last in storage for more than two years. (left of “Red Warty Thing’ in photo)

Some pumpkins are truly sophisticated.  ‘Empress of Iran’ is mottled dark green, light green, orange and beige, with a svelte, rounded shape. (next to porch post in photo)  Perhaps this is the pumpkin that P.G. Wodehouse’s Lord Emsworth grew, alongside his equally high-class but much fatter pig, “Empress of Blandings.”  The ‘Flat White Boer’ hails from South Africa, has a lovely cream-white skin and tasty orange flesh, and is rather flat and disc-like, but with ribs.  It is named for the Dutch Boers who once ruled the country and it will keep your fall porch display from being boer-ing (it’s the white pumpkin in the photo).  Also wheel-shaped is ‘Rouge Vif d’Etampes’ with a spectacular burnt orange skin.  Hailing from France, it is nicknamed “Cinderella’s pumpkin.”  What could be more cosmopolitan than that?