Amanda Walley, age 12, of Deep River, Ontario, Canada, for her question:
Where do gourds come from?
The gourds we use to make decorations are presents from the plant world. They are full of surprises because they come in so many shapes and colors. To find the merriest shapes and the gayest colors you should go south and visit Mexico or the southwestern United States.
The Halloween pumpkin is a vegetable that happens to have dozens of cousins. It is related to the big, juicy watermelon, to the cucumber we slice for salads and to the smaller type cucumbers that we turn into mouth watering pickles. Cantaloupes, other melons and the whole assortment of vegetable squashes also belong in the pumpkin family. So do certain squashes that we do not eat as vegetables. These smallish pump¬kin cousins may not be worth eating, but they certainly make up for it. They are those gay little gourds that have such surprising shapes and happy colors.
Like all the other cucumber cousins, the gourds grow on vines. Some sprawl over the ground and some climb in trailing tangles over the fences. Their big, hairy leaves feel sticky. The trailing vines grow very fast and have an earthy smell of fragrant musk. They like to grow where the summers are warm and very sunny. As a rule, they do not expect rich soil and many gourds thrive where corn and wheat crops cannot find enough nourishment to sustain themselves.
There are dozens of different gourd vines and most of them grow wild. They enjoy life in the warmer parts of the Americas and in Africa. Some grow wild on the sunny islands of the Pacific Ocean. Each vine grows from a seed that comes from a parent plant. It sprouts in the spring and sprawls far and wide through the summer. Soon its shaggy foliage is decked with starry eyed blossoms. The flowers may be yellow or white and from two to four inches wide, depending upon the type of gourd.
The flowers fade and leave tiny green buttons that grow bigger every day. De¬pending upon the type of vine, the buttons grow into apple or pear shapes, pipes or pitchers, clubs or some other surprising shape. They are growing into gourds and the gourds are the fruits of the vines. Inside their tough skins there are seeds for the next generation of gourds. As the summer ends, the tough skinned gourds become hard and dry and change their color. By fall, the trailing vine and its hairy leatres ate ready to wither. The hard, dry gourds left on the stems look like assorted pots and pitchers that belong in some fairyland kitchen. You would think they had been decorated with an assortment of shiny yellows, greens and browns from some gaudy paintbox. The pioneers found them long ago and scooped out their stringy stuffing. They used the skins as cups, water pitchers and other utensils.
Nowadays, many people hang up a string of gaudy gourds to add a happy splash of color in the kitchen or arrange them with groups of grasses, pine cones and dried flowers to cheer up the living room. We cannot eat these vegetables. But one type of gourd makes a sturdy scrubber. When the long oval fruit is dried, it loses its skin. But it leaves a stiff wad of stringy stuffing. We call it a luffa. Andy uses one of these sturdy luffa gourds every day to scrub his back.