I planted honeynut and delicata squash; is this due to cross pollination?
I planted honeynut and delicata squash; is this due to cross pollination?
by Away-Living5278
6 Comments
galileosmiddlefinger
Cross-pollination has no effect on the current year’s fruit. That is, you can plant however many varieties of squash around each other and each will grow fruit that are true to type. Only the seeds inside of each fruit are impacted by cross-pollination, which would yield a hybrid fruit if you saved those seeds to plant next year.
strawflour
/u/galileosmiddlefinger is correct. It’s possible that the seed grower had some accidental cross-pollination or that there was a seed mix-up. But it’s not due to the plants currently in your garden cross-pollinating — that wouldn’t be evident until next year if you saved the seeds & planted them.
Looks like a sugar dumpling or acorn type squash.
RowansRys
Did you plant a regular delicata or Jester? Jester doesn’t usually look quite that acorn-y but is a much stubbier delicata than the usual ones and the patterning looks right
Secret_StoopKid
Honeynut almost always will produce some weird stuff since it’s already hybridized. I believe this was from the honey nut seeds and wouldn’t guess that the delicata played a role at all
SpottedKitty
To start things out, hybridization doesn’t occur in the fruit from cross-pollination. Hybridization refers to the mixing of two established breeding lines in the following generations through the SEEDS. The SEEDS grow into plants that are a hybrid of the parent plants, which are usually just different varieties of the same species. This looks like an acorn squash, but it does have those characteristic delicata stripes in the ribs. Delicata and Acorn are both Cucurbita pepo, and so can cross-pollinate and reliably make good fruit and good seeds.
Honeynut and Delicata are two different species of squash that are actually quite difficult to hybridize, even on purpose. Honeynut is a Cucurbita moschata, and Delicata is a Cucurbita pepo. These two have a very low cross-pollination rate and pollination attempts between these two usually abort before making fruit, or the seeds are not viable or are very poorly formed, or the seeds don’t germinate without a lot, a lot, a lot of babying, and even then the hybrids might be sterile in one way or another.
DeliciousFlow8675309
In the gardening sub someone mentioned that squash are sluts of the tree, and sluts of the vine in regards to a similar post (pumpkin and squash) and I had to share it here because this post was right below it 🤭
6 Comments
Cross-pollination has no effect on the current year’s fruit. That is, you can plant however many varieties of squash around each other and each will grow fruit that are true to type. Only the seeds inside of each fruit are impacted by cross-pollination, which would yield a hybrid fruit if you saved those seeds to plant next year.
/u/galileosmiddlefinger is correct. It’s possible that the seed grower had some accidental cross-pollination or that there was a seed mix-up. But it’s not due to the plants currently in your garden cross-pollinating — that wouldn’t be evident until next year if you saved the seeds & planted them.
Looks like a sugar dumpling or acorn type squash.
Did you plant a regular delicata or Jester? Jester doesn’t usually look quite that acorn-y but is a much stubbier delicata than the usual ones and the patterning looks right
Honeynut almost always will produce some weird stuff since it’s already hybridized. I believe this was from the honey nut seeds and wouldn’t guess that the delicata played a role at all
To start things out, hybridization doesn’t occur in the fruit from cross-pollination. Hybridization refers to the mixing of two established breeding lines in the following generations through the SEEDS. The SEEDS grow into plants that are a hybrid of the parent plants, which are usually just different varieties of the same species.
This looks like an acorn squash, but it does have those characteristic delicata stripes in the ribs. Delicata and Acorn are both Cucurbita pepo, and so can cross-pollinate and reliably make good fruit and good seeds.
Honeynut and Delicata are two different species of squash that are actually quite difficult to hybridize, even on purpose. Honeynut is a Cucurbita moschata, and Delicata is a Cucurbita pepo. These two have a very low cross-pollination rate and pollination attempts between these two usually abort before making fruit, or the seeds are not viable or are very poorly formed, or the seeds don’t germinate without a lot, a lot, a lot of babying, and even then the hybrids might be sterile in one way or another.
In the gardening sub someone mentioned that squash are sluts of the tree, and sluts of the vine in regards to a similar post (pumpkin and squash) and I had to share it here because this post was right below it 🤭