52 Fun Facts About Pumpkins

What type of food is a pumpkin technically classified as?

Botanically it develops from the flower and carries its seeds inside, so it counts as a fruit rather than a vegetable.

Which continent are pumpkins originally native to?

Wild Cucurbita grows in what is now northeastern Mexico and the southern United States.

Irish legend credits the carved Halloween lantern to which trickster who cheated the Devil?

Stingy Jack, in Irish legend, tricked the Devil and was barred from both Heaven and Hell, doomed to roam the Earth with only a glowing ember to light his way; lanterns carved in his memory became jack-o'-lanterns.

Which holiday is most closely associated with pumpkin pie in the United States?

It is a Thanksgiving staple in Canada as well.

What are roasted pumpkin seeds also commonly called?

Pepitas, from the Spanish for 'little seed', are pumpkin seeds, strictly the hull-less green kernels, eaten roasted as a snack and used widely in Mexican cooking.

In the animated TV special, who waits in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin?

Linus van Pelt spends Halloween night in the pumpkin patch in the 1966 special; Sally stays with him out of a crush and berates him when the only thing to rise from the patch is Snoopy.

What color is a typical ripe pumpkin?

Orange: the ripe rind's colour comes from carotenoid pigments that build up as chlorophyll breaks down; white, green and blue-grey varieties also exist, and the word 'pumpkin' has no strict botanical definition.

Which plant family do pumpkins belong to?

Pumpkins belong to the Cucurbitaceae family, also known as the gourd or cucurbit family. This family also includes cucumbers, melons, and squash.

The word 'pumpkin' comes from the Greek 'pepon', meaning what?

Large melon: the Greek 'pepon' passed through French 'pompon' and English 'pumpion' before American colonists settled on 'pumpkin' in the 17th century.

Which cultivar is behind most record-breaking heavyweight pumpkins?

Atlantic Giant, a Cucurbita maxima cultivar developed in the 1970s from Mammoth-type stock, is behind virtually every record-breaking heavyweight pumpkin; its fruits can exceed a tonne.

Pumpkins are made up of approximately what percentage of water?

Pumpkins are approximately 90% water, which is why they are relatively low in calories. A cup of cooked pumpkin contains only about 49 calories.

Which U.S. state produces the most pumpkins?

Illinois leads every other state, growing roughly 95 percent of the US crop destined for processing; its Tazewell County fields around Morton feed the nation's canned pumpkin.

Which company produces the majority of canned pumpkin sold in the United States?

A rain-ruined 2009 crop caused a nationwide canned-pumpkin shortage that Thanksgiving.

What nutrient gives pumpkins their orange color?

Beta-carotene, an orange carotenoid pigment, colours the flesh; eat enough of it and your skin can take on a harmless orange tint called carotenodermia.

What is the traditional 'pumpkin spice' blend typically made from?

Traditional pumpkin spice (or pumpkin pie spice) is a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves. Despite its name, it contains no actual pumpkin -- it's the spice blend used to season pumpkin dishes.

Which strain is called 'the original commercial jack-o'-lantern pumpkin'?

Howden, selected by Massachusetts farmer John Howden in the 1970s from Connecticut Field stock, became the standard commercial jack-o'-lantern, prized for its sturdy handle-like stem and deep ribs.

Which native bee historically pollinated pumpkins in America?

The squash bee, Peponapis pruinosa, is a solitary ground-nesting native that forages only on Cucurbita flowers and pollinated pumpkins long before honeybees reached the Americas; gardeners short on bees sometimes hand-pollinate.

What type of flower do pumpkin plants produce?

Yellow-orange flowers: pumpkins bear large yellow-orange trumpet-shaped blooms, with separate male and female flowers on the same plant; bees move pollen from the males to the fruit-bearing females.

What scientific species name covers most common carving pumpkins?

Cucurbita pepo: the species of most carving and field pumpkins also includes acorn squash, zucchini, and most ornamental gourds.

Most canned pumpkin in the United States is actually made from which variety?

A rainy 2015 spring caused a poor harvest and a Christmas canned-pumpkin shortage.

Which New Hampshire city hosts a famous pumpkin festival with thousands of lit Jack-o'-lanterns?

Keene, New Hampshire, hosted the famous Keene Pumpkin Festival, which set multiple Guinness World Records for the most lit Jack-o'-lanterns in one place, with over 30,000 pumpkins displayed at its peak.

Charles Schulz first introduced the Great Pumpkin in the Peanuts strip in which year?

1959: Linus first awaited the Great Pumpkin in the strip of 26 October 1959, a gag born of muddling Halloween with Christmas; the TV special followed seven years later in 1966.

The Guinness world-record pumpkin shot of 5,545 feet was fired in 2010 in which state?

Utah: the air cannon 'Big 10 Inch' fired a pumpkin 5,545.43 feet at Moab on 9 September 2010, the Guinness record; Moab's high, thin, dry air is thought to add range.

At peak growth, a giant pumpkin can gain up to how much weight in a single day?

Structural calculations suggest a perfect pumpkin could reach 20,000 pounds before collapsing.

Which American writer grew a prize 123-pound pumpkin in 1857?

Henry David Thoreau: in 1857 he grew a 123-pound squash-type pumpkin in Concord from government-issued seed and wrote about it in his unfinished manuscript 'Wild Fruits'.

Pumpkins are an especially rich source of which nutrient?

A 100-gram serving provides 47% of the daily value, with vitamin C the only other micronutrient present in meaningful amounts.

What weight did Travis Gienger's world-record pumpkin reach in 2023?

About 2,750 pounds: Travis Gienger of Anoka, Minnesota weighed in at 2,749 pounds at the Half Moon Bay championship on 9 October 2023, a world record at the time.

Which Canadian province hosts Windsor's annual race across Lake Pesaquid in hollowed-out giant pumpkins?

The race was founded in 1999 by the son of the man who bred the giant variety the boats are carved from.

Pumpkin seed oil is a protected speciality of which Austrian state?

Styria: dark green Styrian pumpkin seed oil, pressed from hull-less Cucurbita pepo var. styriaca seeds, holds protected geographical status and is drizzled on salads and pumpkin soup.

How does a pumpkin plant spread as it grows?

The stems can run 15 to 50 feet, with spring-like tendrils growing from each node.

In Zambia, which part of the pumpkin plant is boiled with groundnut paste to make chibwabwa?

The leaves: chibwabwa is young pumpkin leaves simmered with pounded groundnuts, a Zambian relish eaten with nshima; the shell, seeds and flowers are edible too.

Pumpkins were first domesticated between 7000 and 5500 BCE in which region?

Mesoamerica: seeds and rind fragments from Oaxaca's Guilá Naquitz cave, dated to roughly 7000–5500 BCE, are among the oldest evidence of any domesticated plant in the Americas.

Cucurbita maxima, the species behind Hubbard squash, has its wild ancestor in which country?

Argentina: the wild ancestor Cucurbita andreana grows in the warm lowlands of Argentina and Uruguay, bearing bitter fruits only about softball-size; domesticated forms spread north through the Andes.

Native Americans used pumpkins as a folk remedy for which ailment?

Intestinal worms: pumpkin seeds, rich in the amino acid cucurbitin, were a Native American vermifuge, and American doctors adopted them as an anthelmintic in the early 1800s.

Farmer Sarah Frey, who sells about five million pumpkins a year, is known by what nickname?

Most of her crop is sold for carving rather than eating.

The first giant-pumpkin world record, set at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, weighed how much?

365 pounds: Ontario grower William Warnock's squash-pumpkin at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago set the first record; his 400-pound follow-up won a bronze medal at the 1900 Paris fair.

Which Native American agricultural practice grouped pumpkins with corn and beans?

The Three Sisters is an indigenous companion planting method where corn, beans, and squash (including pumpkins) are grown together. The corn provides a structure for beans to climb, beans fix nitrogen in the soil, and squash leaves shade the ground to retain moisture and suppress weeds.

What Delaware event was famously broadcast on the Science Channel as a pumpkin-launching competition?

Punkin Chunkin, the Sussex County, Delaware championship of catapults and air cannons, aired on the Science Channel until a malfunctioning cannon seriously injured a TV producer in 2016 and the network scrapped that year's broadcast.

What is the term for the hard, woody stem at the top of a pumpkin?

Archaeologists use its thickness to spot early domestication: cultivated ones from Mexico's Guilá Naquitz cave are consistently over 10 mm thick.

Which city hosts the world's largest Halloween parade, founded by puppeteer Ralph Lee in 1974?

New York City's Village Halloween Parade, started in Greenwich Village in 1974 by puppeteer Ralph Lee, marches up Sixth Avenue each 31 October and reports 50,000 costumed participants and 2 million spectators.

What trick do competitive giant pumpkin growers use to maximize their pumpkin's size?

They leave only one fruit per vine, culling every other pumpkin so the plant pours all its sugars into a single fruit; soil tilth, pest control and burying vine nodes to root matter too.

What is the name of the orange-fleshed winter squash often confused with pumpkin in canned products?

Butternut squash is frequently confused with pumpkin because both are Cucurbita moschata species. The FDA allows canned products labeled as 'pumpkin' to contain any golden-fleshed sweet squash of the Cucurbita species, which is why some canned 'pumpkin' may actually be butternut squash.

A 2006 record of 30,128 simultaneously lit jack-o'-lanterns was set on which city's Common?

The New Hampshire town that had long held the record took it back in 2013 with 30,581.

Which Ohio town's Pumpkin Show, founded in 1903, bills itself 'the greatest free show on earth'?

Circleville: its Pumpkin Show began in 1903 when mayor George Haswell set up a small street exhibit of pumpkins and corn; it has grown into a four-day October festival drawing hundreds of thousands.

Which grower selected the giant cultivar that most record-breaking pumpkins descend from?

The cultivar likely descends from the older 'Mammoth' and is grown by nearly every serious competitor.

What is the botanical term for the type of fruit that a pumpkin is classified as?

A pepo: the term covers gourd-family berries with a hard outer rind and no internal septa, including watermelons and cucumbers as well as pumpkins.

Which spice maker introduced the first commercially blended pumpkin pie spice, in 1934?

McCormick launched its Pumpkin Pie Spice blend in 1934; until then home cooks mixed the cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves themselves from recipes printed in cookbooks.

In which two cities was the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte first tested in late 2003?

Vancouver and Washington, D.C.: about 100 stores in the two cities trialled the drink in autumn 2003, after Peter Dukes's team refined it in a lab decorated with leaves and pumpkins, eating pumpkin pie with shots of espresso.

On which day do Japanese families traditionally eat kabocha pumpkin to ward off colds?

The winter solstice: on tōji, Japanese families eat kabocha pumpkin, a vitamin-rich vegetable that stores well into December, in a custom believed to ward off colds through the cold months.

Which fast-food chain added a pumpkin spice latte in 2013, six years after Dunkin' Donuts?

McDonald's added a McCafé pumpkin spice latte in autumn 2013, six years after Dunkin' Donuts launched its version in 2007, as rivals chased the seasonal surge Starbucks had created.

What was the medieval European name for ginger-cinnamon-clove spice mixes resembling pumpkin spice?

Poudre-douce ('sweet powder') was the medieval kitchen's mild blend built on ginger, cinnamon and sugar, as opposed to the peppery poudre-forte; the 1390s household book Le Ménagier de Paris records such spice mixes.

Who wrote the first known American cookbook (1796), which included a spiced 'Pompkin' pie?

Amelia Simmons's American Cookery (1796) gave a 'Pompkin' recipe of stewed pumpkin, cream and eggs seasoned with mace, nutmeg and ginger; today's blends swap mace for cinnamon and cloves.