Squash setting fruit inside the flower

Jan 19, 2022 01:07:25

Thought I'd share my bizarre garden mutant with you. The plant is a Styrian hulless pumpkin--a number of the flowers are a bit odd, but this one is very strange. It started out looking like a male flower--long stem, no swollen ovary beneath it. After a while I noticed that the flower didn't abscess normally and seemed to be swelling. I opened it and found this strange, deformed ball! Never seen anything like it.

Anyone have any thoughts? I'm planning to let it grow to maturity and interested to see if there are any seeds inside.

Jan 19, 2022 05:00:20

this reminds me of the weirdness i find on my male papaya-- generally it only has flowers, lots of them (I keep it because the bees and hummingbirds love it), but every once in a while it will get a weird fruit, a tiny one, which never swells, ripens, or gets seeds. Internet tells me it happens occasionally. I would love to know why!

Jan 19, 2022 05:49:24

These kinds of oddities happen every now and then.

Thanks for sharing some of Mother Nature's unfortunate mistakes.

Jan 28, 2022 20:36:49

Update! It aborted off the plant, but did have seeds! Weird!

Jan 28, 2022 20:44:20

Congratulations! Your squash was somehow crossed with a tomatillo!

Jokes aside, I have had this happen before with a bell pepper plant - even once the pepper was fully grown (and broke out of the flower), the petals were still wrapped around it a bit and stuck to the skin of that pepper. The rest of the peppers on the plant grew normally, so I have no idea why that particular one did that.

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