General Information

COMMON NAMES: Pumpkin, Summer Pumpkin, Autumn Pumpkin, Winter Squash [USA]; German Gartenkürbis TRADITIONAL NAMES: Mōtini (RR), Mautini (MG MT TS TW), Motini (AT), Ma‘utini (MK), ‘Ue (AK), Pumpkin (PL), Moutini (MH RK), Mawutini (PK NS); Other Polynesian - Maukeni (SAM) GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION: NATIVE Mexico - C.America; EXOTIC EXOTIC circumglobal COOK ISLANDS STATUS: Introduced - Recent, Naturalised; Land, lowlands, gardens SIGNIFICANCE LIST: Medicine, Food (Fruit 4+), Medicine KEY FEATURES: An annual prostrate vine; tendrils with 2 or more branches. STEM hard, sharp angled and grooved. LEAVES alternate, large (to 40x40cm) dissected at base to stalk, ± deeply lobed; stalk to 30+cm, very bristly, hollow. FLOWERS solitary, single-sexed; both yellow, chalice-like, 5 lobed; male with 3 stamens; female with 2-3 lobed stigma. FRUIT large (to 50cmØ), nearly spherical, fleshy; stalk hard and ridged. SEEDS ????. SIMILAR SPECIES: Cucurbita maxima Pumpkin (not recorded in Cooks, but common in Fiji) has stems soft and cylindrical (vs. hard and angular); fruit stalk spongy and cylindrical (vs. hard and angular). Cucurbita pepo Marrow has an elongate fruit??????

Cook Islands Distribution

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Southern Group: Present    Makatea: Present
RR	MG	AT	MK	MT	AK	PL	TK	MN
++++	+++	++	+++	++?		++?		-

Northern Group: Present
TN	MH	RK	PK	NS	SW
++	++?	++?	+	P	-

Cucurbita pepo Pumpkin Linnaeus
TAXONOMY: PLANTAE; ANTHOPHYTA (=Angiospermae); MAGNOLIOPSIDA (=Dicotyledones); DILLENIIDAE; Violales; CUCURBITACEAE

SIGNIFICANCE NOTES -
POSITIVE SIGNIFICANCE: Medicine, Food (Fruit 4+), Medicine. Comments: An important food plant.

GENERAL NOTE: This species was first recorded in Europe in the herbal of L.Fuchs (1542). "an early introduction into the Pacific apparently brought to Tahiti in 1767 by Wallis" [ACSmith, Flora Vitiensis Nova]. A native of Mexico, cultivated since at least 5000 BC, and in pre-Columbian times spread across the USA. Introduced into Tahiti by Wallis in 1767, the first European to visit the island [check- was it this species, give reference]. The pumpkin and the orange were the first plants obtained by Rarotongans directly from Europeans. They visited Rarotonga after they left Tahiti for the final time in search of an island to settle - they sailed west as far as the Lau islands of Fiji, before turning eastward and eventually settling on Pitcairn.

Vouchers:
None Recorded.

References:
p.813 Neal - In Gardens of Hawaii
p.383 Tropica
p.2/681 A.C.Smith - Flora Vitiensis Nova
p.103 Wilder - Flora of Rarotonga
p.381d Whistler - Ethnobotany of the Cook Islands

Data Update History (information):
zTX, zB02, zM02, upM05a, zD02

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