It’s Halloween, so I buy a pumpkin and carve it into a Jack’o’lantern but my question is more botanical. Why is a pumpkin hollow? I can’t thing of any melon other than the pumpkin that is just all air on the inside. It seems strange, like I’m missing something.
So, simple question, but with a possibly complicated answer, why are pumpkins hollow?
I may be missing something here, but pumpkins are anything but hollow. They’re filled with fibrous material and seeds that you’ll be cleaning out before you can successfully carve that jack-o-lantern.
It isn’t hollow–it is filled with pulp and seeds.
(eta: and ninjas!)
A few observations.
-Pumpkins aren’t melons, but a kind of squash.
-While pumpkins contain some air spaces, they aren’t completely hollow, but the space contains strings of flesh and seeds.
Green peppers are even more hollow than pumpkins.
In short, pumpkins aren’t that unusual among fruits. And remember that pumpkins are a cultivated crop. They have been subject to selection for qualities that may not be adaptive in nature.
Regarding adaptive values, fruits are “designed” (by natural selection) to be attractive to animals that will eat them and distribute their seeds. Being hollow allows fruits to be larger, and thus appear more attractive to animals, without being so costly in terms of building them.
And you clean the pulp and seeds out so that you can roast the seeds and eat them as part of the kid’s Halloween experience.
At least we used to.
They aren’t totally filled with pulp and seeds, they have plenty of air space inside. They are a type of gourd, some varieties being much more empty than a pumpkin.
But pumpkins are sleepy hollow!
Modern jack-o’-lantern pumpkins are much, much larger than their wild ancestor. The relatively large pulp area is likely just an effect of people turning them into oversized freaks. (A condition we managed to avoid with modern freaky watermelons.)
Strawberries are another fruit that can be hollow—lots of them contain small voids. But domesticated strawberries are fairly different than the wild ones, so maybe that’s due to human selection.
O.K. , so a pumpkin is a gourd instead of a melon. Doesn’t really substantially change the question, though. I cut it open, and it has a large air cavity inside. Why? Botanically, why" What’s the evolutionary advantage of that?
See my post above.
“Evolutionary advantage” doesn’t enter into it in the case of pumpkins, since they’re a product of artificial selection, not natural selection.
To the extent that hollow fruit might have a selective advantage, it’s a way to present a larger and thus more attractive fruit at less cost in terms of producing it.
HUh, that actually makes sense. Nature does like a bit of a bait and switch
Thanks.
Also can help with seed distribution by helping the fruit to float away during flooding.
You seem to keep ignoring the point that pumpkins are as big and hollow as they are because we (humans) have specifically bred/cultivated them to be that way. evolution don’t enter into it.
Look at the article I linked on the evolution of the wild ancestor of pumpkins: that plant, Cucurbita pepo, is the origin of lots of vegetable varities around today, all created through human action. (In a similar way that so many of our leafy vegetables are derived from the same plant.)
Whoa, , for whoa. Why so combative? What the fuck is up with this board? This is about pumpkins, for Christ’s sake. I know damn well that human agriculure has has changed the plant. That’s not really the question. The question, simply, is “Hey. botanically, why is this hollow”? We could expand on that, but I think I buy the idea that it’s to make it look bigger, and thus large animals eat it, with minimal energy expenditure or the plant, and thus the large animals spread it over larger areas.
New to this board? <checks join date> No, that’s not it.
IIRC, strawberries aren’t actually fruit - each “berry” is actually a cluster, which can explain the voids.
Huh, first off thanks. Second off, those pictures made me think of Bell Peppers, Why are those hollow? I haven’t really read any body (except for Collibri) even attempt to answer that question. What evolutionary mechanism makes some fruits hollow and others not?
Yeah, I come, I go, I come back again and I realize “Oh, right, that’s why I left” :smack:
But Hey, there are still a lot of smart people here.
Whilst it’s true that modern pumpkins have been selected for certain characteristics by humans, the wild gourd ancestors of these plants would have been quite similar - probably smaller fruits, but still somewhat hollow.
A fully ripened gourd has a tough outer shell that provides protection for the seeds in the form of a stabilised environment - in areas where rainfall is annually variable, this is an advantage - the tough shell may preserve the seeds for years, whereas the exposed seeds might otherwise desiccate and die, or be eaten by small animals.
