Weird Squash Phenotypes

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here's what Tetsukabuto F1 plants look like: It is a male-sterile interspecies hybrid between maxima and moschata squash. It doesn't produce pollen, therefore, any seeds from the fruits are from a non-related pollen donor. I planted a couple plants in my squash field, next to the pepo squash. I'm hoping to encourage crossing with pepo squash.



This spring I planted a bottle of seeds collected from Tetsukabuto squash. Thank you Flour Weevil!. The person that collected the seeds said that there were maxima, moschata, and pepo growing nearby, so the seeds I planted could potentially have been pollinated by any of those species.

Here's what they look like: A good mix of traits that resemble moschata, and that resemble maxima, and some mid-way between.





There are about 100 plants that germinated and survived till now. Three of them look like they have pepo traits about them...







And one that's just odd:

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Those last leaves look very Silvery! Any other silvery leaves in Squash this year?!

[reed]

This year I grew some of Joseph Lofthouse 's Mospermia squash. I mentioned earlier in another thread that they had pretty good germination and were growing and blooming but that ALL of the flowers were male.   So, I went out yesterday to rip them out but instead I found this. 



I thought hot diggety a female flower after all so I looked around dome more and found this.


The goofy thing isn't even bloomed and it making a fruit! Then I found a couple more on the same vine. It is a sprawling vine with silver specks in the leaves. To confirm I knew the difference between a male or female squash flower I opened the spent bloom on the first one and compared it to a fresh male flower. 



Yep, they are definitely different, I'm guessing the female looked better in younger days. I wonder did the female ever even open? Or did the fruit just grow on it's own? Will there be any seeds? 

Then I thought I would go ahead and take out the other plants but came across this.



So now I'm on observation duty to see if those female flowers on already developing fruits ever do actually open. 

[add] Or, since I have never paid much attention to squash flowers before, is that what they always do?

[add again] Well, I went out and looked at some other squash and the answer is yes, they all do that. Just never noticed before that the baby squash is already there before the female flower opens. 

[philagardener]

I usually do see small fruits underneath the unopened female blossoms ; if the blossom isn't pollinated (or conditions aren't favorable), the whole thing aborts and falls off.

[steev]

So many females look better in younger days, but there is the matter of maturity/development, which is the real yardstick of lasting value.

[walt]

And squash in general start producing male flowers before female flowers.  The only use for the early male flowers is for frying in batter.
O. I guess you could leaves them to feed the pollinater insect.

[blueadzuki]

Found this a few days ago (alas, already beginning to spoil by now)

link

Not sure if this is a pumpkin or a squash or (most likely) something in between. Stalk attachment is ambiguous (its bumpier than a circle, but not a fully defined pentagon) I know pumpkins can get warty, but this is excessive! Pity it's rotting already (I had planned to carve it for Halloween)

[Joseph Lofthouse]

To update:

I harvested a lot of squash from the Maxima/Moscahata hybrid. Some of the plants were male sterile (the male flowers withered away without opening). Some had normal looking male flowers. I didn't pay attention to that early in the growing season, or I might have culled the sterile plants. I harvested a lot of fruit. (Average germination 50%) They taste really good.

Maxima/Moschata inter-species hybrid. 2nd Generation.

High Resolution Image

Two of the fruits were hairy. I wonder if that might make them more resistant to squash bugs? I saved seeds from them, and intend to plant them in a separate patch this growing season.

I harvested about 20 seeds from a few plants grown in a patch of acorn squash. Be interesting to see if any of those have pepo traits this growing season.

[mskrieger]

That's really exciting. Do you have any indication if the hybrid would be resistant to squash borer (did the plants have hard moschata-style stems?)

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Apr 16, 2018 11:15:06 GMT -5 mskrieger said:

That's really exciting. Do you have any indication if the hybrid would be resistant to squash borer (did the plants have hard moschata-style stems?)

Phenotype of the offspring was all over the place... Plenty of options to select for moschata-style stems. This is one project where it might be nice to know who's the daddy.

[mskrieger]

Apr 16, 2018 15:19:08 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Apr 16, 2018 11:15:06 GMT -5 mskrieger said:

Phenotype of the offspring was all over the place... Plenty of options to select for moschata-style stems. This is one project where it might be nice to know who's the daddy.

Wouldn't it always. If you have seed to share, I'd take on that selection project. We have a lot of squash borer pressure here.

[mskrieger]

Quick update: the maximoss germinated well. I planted 5 seeds/hill and got 2 or 3 plants each. That's really well, considering it rained the whole week after I planted. None of them have the massive cotyledons of a typical maxima squash (I planted one hill of max for comparison) but a couple might have silvery leaf spots like some moschata (I also planted a hill of mosch.) They're growing fast, so I should have a better take on phenotype in a couple of weeks.

[mskrieger]

Just reporting back in--these Maximoss squash are DOMINATING my garden. They like it. They like it a lot. They overgrew the squash bed, took over the melons, and are now invading my daughters' flower garden and the fall carrots. No sign of squash borer damage, though I couldn't get in there to look if I wanted to. 

And did I mention they're setting fruit left, right and center?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

mskrieger: Thanks for the grow report. LOL!

[mskrieger]

So now, a month on, it's gotten interesting. Because it's been unusually hot and wet and humid around here. We've gotten more than a foot of rain in the past month. The maximoss squash have caught the leaf yellowing bacterial wilt type disease that's common to cucurbits out in my neck of the woods, though it usually comes on later in August when the weather gets cool. This year's been early, and it's been because of all the rain, not the temps, which have been hot.

But only the old growth has been dying, the young growing tips of the vines are alright and still setting new squash, so it can't be that bad. We'll see how it affects flavor. I was worried that coming from such a dry, high altitude this squash wouldn't handle the humidity at all, but they seem at least averagely OK with it.