Weird Squash Phenotypes

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Hopi pale grey from internet:


Joseph Lofthouse, are you sure its not hopi pale grey?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I had a row of mixta squash this year that was about 30 feet long. The next row over on either side were moschata squash. The vines grew together. I thought one day that I would go through the mixta patch and emasculate the plants for a week. Ha! emasculating 30 or so plants was way more work that I was willing to do. If I attempt an interspecies cross in another year, I might be willing to emasculate a single plant. The less labor way would be to surround a single mixta plant with a bunch of moschata plants and let them swamp it with lots of pollen.

Last year I grew the mixta and moschata squash together in the same field. Yesterday when I was harvesting the mixta squash I found one fruit that looks like it might be an interspecies hybrid.

The peduncle looks rather 5 sided, like a moschata, and not round-ish like a mixta.



The coloration and shape seems like it's mid-way between mixta and moschata.



Guess I'll cut it open in a month or so and see if it managed to make seeds.

The seeds from the suspected interspecies cross from last year didn't germinate.

[flowerweaver]

I planted a mix of heirloom summer squash that I got from Skyfire seeds in Kansas. From the "mix" I got a couple of kinds of zucchini and pattypans, but the majority of plants have produced this oddball hybrid.

At first I thought they were going to be crookneck. The shell has some mild ribbing with flecks and is very tough, and the flesh is meh. I will probably feed them to the chickens. Any thoughts on what they crossed up with?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Last summer I grew a couple of the squash that I have been calling 'Hopi White' inside the patch of 'Small green/orange buttercups'. This summer most of the seeds I planted from the Hopi white were hybrids.

Here is what the fruits look like that I am saving for seeds. They picked up the blocky shape of the buttercups, and the 'cup' feature around the blossom end, and the fruit coloration was modified. The two fruits in the top/right corner are like the mother of the cross, so probably pure non-crossed seed from last year. I haven't tasted the fruits yet.



The father of the cross looked like this:

[blueadzuki]

I'm not sure if it counts here, but I picked up this ugly little bugger yesterday at a farmers market. What combination of squash, pumpkin and gourd (it has to have some of the latter, since it has a woody shell) made it I don't know but SOMETHING funny went on in the breeding fields

 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Sept 15, 2015 10:30:58 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Today I opened up the squash that I suspect is a mixta/moschata hybrid. There were 22 seeds in it that looked viable. There were hundreds of empty seed coats. That's in line with what I would expect from an interspecies hybrid: messed up fertility.

Here is a squash from the same vine, in the middle of the photo, compared to a mixta on the left, and a moschata on the right. It's color is mid-way between that of the suspected parent species. The green flesh was interesting to me...



Here's what the peduncle looked like: Looks very moschata-like to me.


Adding a typical mixta peduncle for comparison:


While processing the mixta squash seeds today, there were a total of 3 fruits that had high numbers of empty seed coats in them. All three were yellow/white squash. They all had the pentagonal peduncle.

There were also two fruits which I think were mostly pollinated by moschata squash. They were pollinated the day I attempted to remove mixta flowers, and I mannually brushed mixta anthers against their styles.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

are you going to try crossing it with your other suspected hybrid in the first post (maxima x moshata)?

[jondear]

It'll be interesting to see the f2s

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Nov 17, 2015 16:35:57 GMT -5 keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) said:

are you going to try crossing it with your other suspected hybrid in the first post (maxima x moshata)?

The seeds from that squash didn't germinate.

[Hristo]

These are from Pink Banana (maxima) x Musquee de Provence (moschata) x 3/4 times crossed with different Atlantic Giants (maxima) x Tromboncino Rampicante (moschata) x Atlantic Giant:



This one is from C. argyrosperma (mixta) x moschata x Atlantic Giant:





All of them from this year. The plan was to cross the 2 lines, but all the plants were male sterile so left them to open pollinate. They were surrounded by top quality (for taste) maxima and moschata lines. Only one of the argyrosperma x moschata x maxima plants managed to keep one fruit (there were many female flowers) and inside were just 2 partly developed seeds... and I managed to crush one of them.

Back in time the grand plan was to breed a more heat tolerant giant pumpkin, but nowadays I'm not very interested in them and I plant these seeds more out of curiosity.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Hristo: I love those squash. Good work.

---

Yesterday I cooked a moschata with an unusual peduncle. The stem merged into the fruit which is atypical. The skin of the fruit around the peduncle was woody.


A typical moschata peduncle looks like this. (A clear distinction between the fruit and the stem.)

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Ate one of my Hopi White squash from last year this week. I made a Hopi Squash Yellow Curry Soup that i threw together. It turned out pretty good all things considered.

Inside i found these darker seeds segregating out from the rest. Is this a normal seed coloring for Cucurbita maxima? Does this indicate that these seeds are crossed since i've only observed white seeds from this line before? Is this a recessive gene segregating out? Anyone want to try and grow these? gilbert , do you want to try these?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jul 29, 2014 0:22:50 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Maxima squash with mottled leaves. Peduncle is the classic corky round non-flared stem.

The best example yet of this phenotype in maxima squash showed up this year. There is only one plant, so it's my intention this time to self it. Perhaps that will fix the trait among the descendants. I've started to speculate that the gray/mottled leaf trait might have some value in adaptation to deserts and/or to high-altitude.



A few jagged-leaf maximas are showing up in the odd phenotypes patch this year. I'm also intending to self them.



I can't find any maxima squash this year with the "silver leaved" trait.

The suspected mixta/moschata crosses are doing well. Sure making me scratch my head though... Some of the seed I planted may have been F2, so within sibling groups I am observing plants with leaves that look like mixta leaves, and leaves that look like moschata leaves. But I didn't keep records of what I planted... Bwah ha ha!!! I figure that I'll know it when I see it. Maybe one of these days I'll find a happy medium between overwhelming record keeping and nothing at all. I planted moschata squash close to each suspected inter-species hybrid, so that there will be a pollen donor just in case any of the hybrids are male-sterile.

For example: These two squash are a sibling group. They came out of the same fruit. The germination rate on the sibling group was around 10%. One of these plants has the characteristic round leaves of moschata squash, and one of them has the leaves characteristic of a mixta squash.


More [Mixta X Moschata] F2 siblings. This sibling group had great germination.

[12540dumont]

Hristo, I get why you'd cross a musea with a pink banana. Both taste great. But the Atlantic Giant is only good for pig food. Yuck. I'd also love a pink Banana x Trombone.

Even better, maybe you could find one of Joseph's early moschatas to cross with a pink banana! Then I'd have great fast squash. But Atlantic Giant....ewww? Hristo, what are you thinking? Squash has been so difficult for me the last few years, that I'm lucky if I get anything at all. Giant fields of zukes all around me, the squash bug has been rampant!

Last year, I didn't even get a pumpkin pie. I had to BUY squash for Indian food and pumpkin bread. Now that's just awful. I'm sitting here drooling thinking about a pink banana crossed with a musea/trombone.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I've been chasing odd-leaved squash for a few years, and planting odd-looking plants in patches with other odd-balls. This year, a fig-leaved maxima squash showed up.

Fig-leaved Maxima squash.