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wild harvesting

Ozark Wild Squash

Ryan M Miller

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posted 4 years ago

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Although I live in southwest ohio, I got the opportunity to visit a monastery just west of Tahlequah (Our Lady of Clear Creek) in the foothils of the Ozarks in Oklahoma last Summer. I found some wild squash while I was there. Unfortunately, I picked the squash before they were ripe and none of the seeds were viable. I was wondering if any members here from the Ozarks area were familiar with wild squash (Cucurbita pepo ssp. ozarkana). From my experience, the wild squash I found were bitter, soapy, and high in cucurbitacins. The squash were also yellow, smooth skinned and about the size of yellow crookneck squash. Other pictures I have seen of wild ozark squash show tan-white oviform or pyriform fruits about the size of a large goose egg. Some are even green with white stripes like Tennesse spinning gourds. I ended up buying some Ozark nest egg gourds from Baker Creek, but I wanted to know if anyone else from around the Ozarks has any pictures of them or any knowledge of them. Unlike buffalo gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima), these wild squash are closely related to crookneck squash and acorn squash and often freely hybridize with them. Below is a picture of the squash I found last Summer at the monastery.

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Greg Martin

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posted 4 years ago

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Wow! Never heard of these. Thank you Ryan. If anyone has seeds to share please put me on the list. I want to see how they do and make some intentional crosses badly!

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Greg Martin

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posted 4 years ago

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Looks like it also goes by the name Johnny Gourd.

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Greg Martin

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posted 4 years ago

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I'm going to order some from Baker Creek right now and this year the crossing can begin! I'm going to be growing it this year interplanted with Costata Romanesco zucchini as well as by itself.

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Ryan M Miller

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posted 4 years ago

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I need to warn you though. Some wild squash can be toxic and very bitter. The seeds can still be eaten though if properly soaked and processed.

Greg Martin

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My assumption is that the toxic compounds are bitter and breeding out bitter taste will be sufficient safety. But I will double check on that before eating anything. Thank you Ryan!

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Greg Martin

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Ryan, you don't by any chance have a picture of what they look like cut open, do you?

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Ryan M Miller

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posted 4 years ago

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Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the inside of the squash flesh I collected. Aaron Thatcher on Youtube does have pictures of the inside of one of the wild squashes he collected on Facebook. I'm waiting for him to answer whether or not I can share his images here. The squash Aaron Thatcher found has a hard shell when fully ripe and 1/4-1/3 inch thick rind. They seem to be a semi-domesticated, feral, or escaped non-bitter ornamental gourd or small vining summer squash. When fully dry, the squash resemble small bottle gourds (Lagenaria siceraria).

The squash I found at the monastery near Tahlequah when I picked them had a thick 1/3-1/2 inch bitter rind. Although the plant was vining, they may have been an F2 cross with crookneck summer squash growing in the garden nearby since they were large and yellow. There was no air space between the seeds and the rind. I'm assuming if I had picked them later, they would be eighteen inches to two feet long and have had a hard shell that must be pierced with a large carving knife or cleaver.

Greg Martin

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posted 4 years ago

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I really like the idea of creating "wild" zucchinis that climb trees and spread by self seeding. Then people who complain about zucchinis will really have something to complain about!!! :)

It will be interesting to see if the Ozark wild squash will be able to self seed here in Maine for me and to see how many generations it will take to get the best traits from both parents. I'm going to try and maintain a decent sized gene pool from both parents. I'll have to do a bit of reading to decide on how many plants of each to start with and collect seeds from. Anyone have any suggestions? Maybe 12 of each? I'm going to buy the Costata Romanesco zucchini seeds from several suppliers for the interplanting.

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Ryan M Miller

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posted 4 years ago

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Accordung to the BONAP plant atlas, wild or escaped populations of Cucurbita pepo have been reported as far north as Coos county in New Hampshire in the US. Here is the link to the current map as of 2014:
http://bonap.net/MapGallery/County/Cucurbita%20melopepo.png
Cucurbita pepo usually only needs 90-110 days to yield mature fruit. That should be well withing a 120 day frost-free growing season should you happen to be in Northern Maine. I've read somewhere that wild squash used to be dispersed by extinct megafauna, like mastodons and ground sloths, before the animals went extict. In the Ozarks, wild squash spreads nowadays by floating down river during flood season and washing up on a new dry creek bed.

Ryan M Miller

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posted 4 years ago

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Another plant to consider interplanting with wild ozark squash would be yellow crookneck squash. I remember reading somewhere that it might be the closest related domesticated edible cultivar of Cucurbita pepo to wild Ozark squash. The only problem is that the fully mature fruits are too tough to use as food other than the toasted seeds.

I plan on trying to cross Aaron Thatcher's strain of wild squash from east Tennessee with crookneck squash to get a vining Summer Squash with larger fruits. Below are some images of Aaron Thatchers wild squash. His squash might have been domesticated at some point because the mature fruits are not bitter:

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Greg Martin

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posted 4 years ago

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Thank you for all the great pics Ryan. I'll do my best to try and track down the Coos county squash. I live very close to there.

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Ryan M Miller

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posted 4 years ago

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I you really want to go hunting for wild squash in Coos County, New Hampshire, according to the New England Plant Atlas, specimens of Cucurbita pepo were collected in the southern part of Coos county. It looks like the closest town to the fuzzy dot on the map is Gorham. There are several rivers near the town. I wouldn't be surprised if the squash plants were found growing by one of the rivers. I've never been to the area so I don't know exactly where to find them or if they're even still there. Here is the link to the website with the map:
http://neatlas.org/c.html#CUCURBITA

Greg Martin

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Thank you very much with your help on this. I'm doing a bit more digging hoping to find some more specifics on the data that created the dots in NH and VT. If there's still feral self-seeding population up there I'd really like to find it this fall and respectfully collect some seeds for grow out evaluations. Fingers crossed. Worst case it's a good excuse to spend a little time there at a nice time of the year :)

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Ryan M Miller

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posted 4 years ago

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I was hoping someone else had some experience with wild squash from the Ozark region. I've seen at leat two threads about buffalo gourds (Cucurbita foetidissima), but none on wild Ozark squash yet. It looks like one forum user from Arkansas, Judith Browning, commented about wild Ozark squash on one of the threads on buffalo gourds though. I sent her a purple mooseage just now.

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posted 4 years ago

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Ryan M Miller wrote:I was hoping someone else had some experience with wild squash from the Ozark region. I've seen at leat two threads about buffalo gourds (Cucurbita foetidissima), but none on wild Ozark squash yet. It looks like one forum user from Arkansas, Judith Browning, commented about wild Ozark squash on one of the threads on buffalo gourds though. I sent her a purple mooseage just now.

Hi Ryan, I had to find the thread you mention to see what I said

I don't remember seeing anything like the wild squash in the images in your thread here. What we have locally that I've run across anyway is definitely buffalo gourds (Cucurbita foetidissima) as in Tyler's thread Buffalo Gourd Here's what I said there....

We have something similar that we called egg gourds and picked when hard (and white) . I don't know genus and species and am not sure if we didn't make up the name. They were about 2 inches across, larger than a large egg. The kids would always gather them along the creek and bring them home to draw and paint on. Maybe we were missing out on a food source.

I haven't run across them in years...our old place had vines popping up in the front yard and we decorated the 'eggs' at a party once. The young ones got into throwing and stomping them so I imagine they are everywhere now.

I wonder if the 'Ozark wild squash' is a Missouri Ozark native?

I'll ask around locally.

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Ryan M Miller

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posted 3 years ago

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Based on my past experience, squash typically ripens between August and October where I live in Ohio so I'd expect wild Ozark squash to ripen around the same time. For anyone foraging wild Cucurbita pepo, the peak season should be mid September, but wild fruits can stay on the plants through winter.

Ryan M Miller

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posted 3 years ago

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For anyone planning to forage for wild Cucurbita pepo squash in the Ozarks, the Mississippi River valley, or eastern Texas, I'm assuming the guidelines for picking garden squash might also apply. Usually cultivated Cucurbita pepo is harvested when the rind is no longer soft enough to pierce with a fingernail and the stem has dried up. By this time, the plant has often already died, from powdery mildew or squash vine borer damage. I don't remember where, but I remember reading that it takes about 45-60 days for a Winter squash to fully mature. I have also seen photographs of dried out wild Ozark squash that have hard, woody rinds like the brown squash in the image above from Aaron Thatcher, so they may be able to stay on the vine for extended periods of time long after the plant has already died.

Keep in mind that truly wild squash are usually bitter and only the seeds can be eaten after proper preparation.

Ryan M Miller

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posted 3 years ago

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Since I have just finished harvesting my ornamental gourds, I wouldn't be surprised if there are already ripe wild squash ready to harvest in the Ozark region and eastern Texas right now. I challenge anyone to figure out how to prepare the seeds of these wild squash so they can be eaten. Try looking in river floodplains and disturbed areas for the fruits of these squash. They should look like eggs or little pears. The plants should have palmate leaves rather than kite-shaped leaves seen on Cucurbita foetidissima.

Daylene Alford

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posted 1 year ago

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I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd add what information I have.

These are my wild squash. I have no idea if they are Ozarkana or Texana sup species. We live in the far southeast corner of Oklahoma, so they could be either or a cross between the two.

I have tried raising from seed, but have not had any luck. They seem to produce only a few plants despite having numerous fruits, so I'm not sure if they need some sort of stratification or if they have low seed fertility. The fruits will be solid white when mature.

They are bitter and form a very hard gourd like shell. You literally have to crack with a hammer.

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Daylene Alford

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posted 1 year ago

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And these are my hybrids that I believe are crosses between these and yellow squash. I kept seed back from a volunteer plant that showed up in my horse pasture, and these are 3 years in. I have not controlled pollination. Last year I grew the hybrids next to yellow squash again. Seems like they may have crossed back in my garden. Then the ones in the horse pasture have apparently crossed back again with the wild squash. The white oval shape was bitter, but my horses figured out they were there and didn't seem to mind.

The round ones with the yellow stripes make very hard shells. Last year they were not bitter.

Small yellow are not bitter will probably have hard shells. They only came up late (after a bush hog went through) so we'll have to see how they do.

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Pearl Sutton

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posted 1 year ago

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I always love it when I put something odd into a search engine and get a permies link or two!
My neighbor showed me Ozark Nest Egg Gourds he grew. Looked like an egg! COOL! He saw them floating in Truman lake,brought one home, smashed it and dumped it into a flower pot.

I wondered if they were edible, searched it and hit this article that others might find interesting.
United States Finally May Have a Vegetable It Can Call Its Own : Food: Archeologists have discovered a small, wild gourd that they believe is the ancestor of today’s summer squashes.

From that article:

However, during excavations in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee in the 1980s, archeologists recovered rinds and seeds of wild gourds from Native American camp and village sites that date back 7,000 years. Although the gourds were clearly being eaten, perhaps as a trail snack by Native Americans, these leftovers showed no evidence of domestication. Gourd fragments recovered from later sites--3,000 to 4,000 years old--did show signs of domestication.

and a picture, they DO look like eggs!

Interesting! Looks like they like REALLY wet areas. And float in the lakes :D

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Blake Lenoir

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posted 1 year ago

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Greetings! I wanna find more types of ancient squash and gourds that have been grown in the Great Lakes. Have any of the Illinois Indians used the egg shape gourd centuries ago?

Ryan M Miller

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Pearl Sutton wrote:I always love it when I put something odd into a search engine and get a permies link or two!
My neighbor showed me Ozark Nest Egg Gourds he grew. Looked like an egg! COOL! He saw them floating in Truman lake,brought one home, smashed it and dumped it into a flower pot.

I wondered if they were edible, searched it and hit this article that others might find interesting.
United States Finally May Have a Vegetable It Can Call Its Own : Food: Archeologists have discovered a small, wild gourd that they believe is the ancestor of today’s summer squashes.

From that article:

However, during excavations in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee in the 1980s, archeologists recovered rinds and seeds of wild gourds from Native American camp and village sites that date back 7,000 years. Although the gourds were clearly being eaten, perhaps as a trail snack by Native Americans, these leftovers showed no evidence of domestication. Gourd fragments recovered from later sites--3,000 to 4,000 years old--did show signs of domestication.

and a picture, they DO look like eggs!

Interesting! Looks like they like REALLY wet areas. And float in the lakes :D

Wild squash contain large quantities of toxic cucurbitacin in the fruit pulp. The only way I could think of eating the flesh of these squash is by leaching the cucurbitacins out with several changes of water and waiting until the fruit pulp no longer tastes bitter when sampled. This process would leach out large ammounts of water soluble vitamins from the fruit pulp along with the cucurbitacins and the fruit pulp will likely be bland. I believe such a cold leaching process is used in subsaharan Africa to process colocynth gourds as a famine food (Citrullus colocynthis).

Although the pulp of unprocessed Ozark wild gourds is toxic and bitter, the seeds can still be eaten after they've been thorougly rinsed and dehulled. The seeds of watermelon fruits and colocynth gourds can also be used in the same way.

Daylene Alford

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posted 10 months ago

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This is an update for this years hybrids. I have not selected any of these they are all volunteers from natural pollination. I have not tasted all of these yet this year as some are still small but so far, I have not had any bitter ones. That really surprises me as many of these look very similar to the wild squash.

There is also a solid yellow squash that looks very much like a yellow straight neck but with ridges along the sides. I didn't think to photograph that one before I ate it.

I still have seeds from last year. If anyone wants some send me a PM with your address. No guarantees about bitterness, shape, color, or viability.

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K Peterspek

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posted 9 months ago

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I have these squash growing all over the lot behind ours here in Port Saint Lucie,Fl!Hundreds of them!

Thomas Pickens

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posted 5 months ago

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Mine are from the shoreline across from Point 15 in Cape Fair, MO. Definitely not a gourd, and they grow in other locations along the shore. I'll try cutting one open and update you with another post.

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SW Missouri, Zone 6b

Thomas Pickens

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Here's the interior. If anything, they're crossed with egg gourds. I see absolutely no stripes, and the leaf shape is wrong for the gourds I've seen around here. Doesn't necessarily mean anything though. So quite possibly it came from a crossing between a wild egg gourd and yellow straight neck summer squash.

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SW Missouri, Zone 6b

Thomas Pickens

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After looking over the pictures, I must say that I don't believe that the buffalo gourd could hybridize with summer squash. Buffalo gourd is Cucurbita Foetidissima, while the summer squash is Cucurbita Pepo. Plants are normally able to breed within a species. Buffalo gourd isn't the same species, and cannot breed with C. Pepo. Ozark nest egg gourds are Cucurbita Pepo, and can cross with domesticated squash. It was most likely domesticated during a second domestication event about 5,000 years later than in South America. So yes, it's domesticated, but not fully. However, the stripes on squash hybrids can be mutations, genetic throwbacks, or cross pollination between other cultivars you grow, or even just carried by pollinators or wind.

SW Missouri, Zone 6b

Thomas Pickens

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Here's a decent article on the "rediscovery" of Cucurbita Pepo v Ozarkana. My family has been growing them for a REALLY long time, so I suppose they should have asked a hillbilly. 🙄

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-11-22-mn-2164-story.html

SW Missouri, Zone 6b

Thomas Pickens

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Here's the original paper. The Ozark egg gourd, or Cucurbita Pepo v Ozarkana is the prehistoric ancestor of literally all summer squash varieties we consume today. It is NOT an escaped cultivar, and we DID NOT introduce it or turn it loose. It was 100% already here in plain sight. Europeans just had a difficult time believing that "brown" people could discover agriculture without it being introduced. Go figure. It was exported to multiple locations and experimented with until we have what we see today. The pumpkin, or Cucurbita Moschata, was a separate domestication event that occurred in South America with an unknown Cucurbita species several thousand years earlier.

https://www.academia.edu/68174843/The_initial_domestication_of_Cucurbita_pepo_in_the_Americas_10_000_years_ago

SW Missouri, Zone 6b

Mark William

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This thread inspired me to find a listing for Ozark Nest Egg squash seeds on Etsy. This is from a population gathered in the wild at Bull Shoals Lake in Missouri, I ordered a packet out of curiosity.

I don't have any particularly interesting squash seeds to offer in trade myself, but I would be glad to offer a payment for postage and time if any other members have wild-type pepo squash they would be willing to share with me!

Thomas Pickens

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Clarification. True pumpkins are Cucurbita Moschata species. They're from South America and CANNOT cross with true squash/Cucurbita Pepo species. Quite often squash are mislabeled as pumpkins due to the summer squash being known as the "field pumpkin" in the past. Knowing the difference can prevent quite a bit of cross pollination. If you make sure you get seeds from a reputable source, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort when seedsaving.

SW Missouri, Zone 6b

Joy Baisden

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posted 3 months ago

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Ozark squash potato.

Blake Lenoir

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Greetings! I wanna find out if the Ozark squash has been used by many tribes in prehistoric times in the eastern woodlands and in the agricultural complex. Do many tribes still use it today?

Ryan M Miller

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posted 2 months ago

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Blake Lenoir wrote:Greetings! I wanna find out if the Ozark squash has been used by many tribes in prehistoric times in the eastern woodlands and in the agricultural complex. Do many tribes still use it today?

Before C. pepo was fully domesticated in North America, the seeds of wild squash as well as the related perennial buffalo gourd (C. foetidissima) were thoroughly rinsed and processed for use as an oilseed crop. I remember reading a journal article that investigated the boiling of wild C. pepo texana and ozarkana seeds in a wood ash solution, but it might take me a while to find the article.

The same article that I previously mentioned also suggested that wild and bitter C. pepo squash could also still be crafted into small spoons and used as floating bobbers for woven fishing nets.

If you want more information on what ethobotanical uses for C. pepo and C. foetidissima were documented at the time of contact, I suggest browsing the Native American Ethnobotany Base. I've found several wild plants mentioned in this database, so it might have what information you were looking for.
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