Field or jack-o-lantern pumpkin, cocozelle, vegetable marrow, zucchini, citrouille Field or jack-o-lantern pumpkin, cocozelle, vegetable marrow, zucchini, citrouille

Cucurbita aurantia Willdenow; C. pepo var. medullosa Alefeld

Plants annual; roots taproots or fibrous. Stems creeping or climbing, rooting adventitiously at nodes, to 3 m, hispid with persistent, strongly pustulate-based hairs and a hispidulous-hirsutulous understory; tendrils 2–7-branched 1–5 cm above base, hispidulous to hirsutulous, eglandular. Leaves: petiole 5–20(–24) cm, pustulate-hispid (pustulate-based) and hispidulous-hirsutulous; blade <sometimes white-spotted at vein junctions>, broadly ovate-cordate to triangular-cordate or reniform, shallowly to deeply palmately (3–)5–7-lobed, 20–30 × 20–35 cm, usually broader than long or equally so, base cordate, lobes ovate-deltate to obovate or obovate-rhombic, midveins of leaf lobes not distinctly elongate-whitened, margins denticulate to serrate-denticulate, surfaces hirsute, hirsute-strigillose, villous-strigose, or hispidulous-scabrous, eglandular. Peduncles in fruit 5-ribbed, not or very gradually expanded at point of fruit attachment, hardened, woody. Flowers: hypanthium campanulate, 8–12 mm; sepals linear to subulate-linear, 8–25 mm; corolla yellow to golden yellow or orange, tubular-campanulate, 4–10 cm; anther filaments glabrous; ovary villous. Pepos wholly light to dark green, green with white stripes, or minutely cream- or green-speckled to yellow, orange, or bicolored green and yellow, globose or depressed-globose to ovoid, obovoid, ellipsoid-ovoid, broadly ellipsoid, slightly pyriform, cushion-shaped, or cylindric, 5–10(–25) cm, usually smooth or ribbed, rarely verrucose, <flesh whitish to yellowish or pale orange, soft, not bitter>. Seeds whitish to cream or tawny, narrowly to broadly elliptic to obovate, rarely orbiculate, 7–15(–26) mm, margins raised-thickened, surface ± smooth. 2n = 40.

Flowering Jun–Oct. Vacant lots, trash heaps, roadsides, disturbed sites; 0–300 m; introduced; Ala., Calif., Conn., Kans., Ky., La., Mass., Mich., Nev., N.H., N.Mex., N.Y., N.C., Ohio, Pa., S.C., Tenn., Utah, Va.; Mexico; South America; introduced also in West Indies, Central America, Eurasia, Atlantic Islands.