Hello!
We finally cracked open our painted Halloween pumpkin for my chickens, and it looked like this inside! Does anyone have any ideas on how this could have happened? I've never seen anything like it. The entire thing was filled with the dry strings, with seeds buried down at the bottom. We are so curious about it!
Thank you!
by SweetenedTomatoes
19 Comments
Is it a spaghetti squash?
Some breeds if pumpkins have a stringy interior, they usually are sold as spaghetti pumpkins. If this wasn’t one of those breeds it just randomly had the same mutation that causes this trait.
edit: Had to look it up again, Americans seem to call them Spaghetti Squash, not Spaghetti Pumpkin. In my language there isn’t even a distinction between squash an pumpkin, everything is just “Kürbis”.
This is typical for pumpkins… the flesh is typically stringy… it just tends to stick together better when it has moisture…
I cook and eat pumpkins…all kinds… a lot of them have stringy flesh…so i usually end up puréing until it’s smooth
If this isn’t a spaghetti squash it looks more like a spaghetti squash than an actual spaghetti squash 😂
It went through a black hole.
Save the seeds. You’ve got a mutant pumpkin with good culinary potential.
Trumpkin
Squashes, gourds, and melons are in a group of plants that can cross pollinate very easily. Sometimes you get weird mixes if you grow more than one kind near each other.
Some varieties are also just weirdos, so you may have gotten an oddball.
Got a little too close to the multiverse.
No shave November?
I just read an article about this this morning! [Squashes Demystified from The Botanist in the Kitchen](https://botanistinthekitchen.blog/2024/11/27/squashes-demystified/) Jeanne L. D. Osnas talks about squash diversity and the Mendelian genetics of squash stringiness.
>A particularly interesting gene unique to *C. pepo* called *sp* controls the stringiness of the fruit. When a hapless *C. pepo* inherits two copies of the recessive allele (gene variant) of the *sp* gene from its parents, the fruit flesh will have “spaghetti” texture, breaking into long strands when cooked. Hence, the name for “spaghetti squash” or “vegetable spaghetti.” Anatomically the strings are separated by bands of pectin that disintegrate during cooking. As cultivars of *C. pepo*, Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins, acorn squash, and over-ripe zucchini can also be stringy. If you cook up your Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins after Halloween, you might have to put the flesh through the blender to puree the strings.
To shreds you say?
I agree with the person who said to save the seeds. The only spaghetti squash that I’ve seen is yellow and very gourd shaped and frankly doesn’t taste very good. You might have something unique here.
This looks like spaghetti squash. (It’s a type of pumpkin)
This happens sometimes if you have different kinds of squash planted in the same area and they get cross pollinated. This looks like cross between spaghetti & pumpkin I’d like to try how it tastes!
I gave one like this to my goats and they loved it!
off topic, whats the brand of those shoes and do they have a stardew valley version
cross with spaghetti squash we have separate squash varieties that are spaghetti squash but not shaped like any pumpkins that are cultivated in the US
This happens to mine when they freeze and thaw a few times.