Cucurbita Species, Coyote Gourd, Coyote Melon

my mom was an exceptional gourd artist! all shapes and sizes. she attended showed and sold her art all over california and in casa gran...Read Morede and bought gourds from most of those same places that had gourd farms. all except little round ones she carved and painted as christmas ornaments i still have about 20 and many of her other sizes of beautiful art. ive always seen those plants and gourds growing along the road sides here in the antelope valley california, and decided id give it a whirl to see if i inherited even a small amount of her skills. haha i picked about a dozen in october the weather here still a bit warm in that month but the gourds were perfectly ripened. i set them in a wicker basket on the concrete next to the south facing wall of the house for a month then peeled them was easy but slow going as not to cut my self with exacto! i brought them indoors after and im now starting to carve them. i only cracked one because i dropped it but during skinning and drying and now carving its not going to badly i have all my moms gourd tools including the tiniest jig saw with blades so small you dare not drop them! lol and a dremel for tiny hole drilling. im so excited doing this and cant wait to add little fairy lights inside and see how my first patterns show up on the walls at night .if they act like other melons we grow here then ill plant the seeds from them which look perfect! in late april early may in hopes 5 or 6 months later i have a nice growing field of them to harvest come october i shall post pics during the 6 months if all goes well and maybe one or two of my coyote night lights :) if a bumper crop? ill be happy to share them here to any who want them.

Per Jan Emming, Destination:Forever Ranch and Gardens, a 40 acre desert botanical garden/sustainable living homestead, AZ.
"Coyote...Read More melon (Cucurbita palmata) is a squash family member (Cucurbitaceae) that thrives in the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts on surprisingly low rainfall. In the driest regions they tend to be restricted to wash channels and arroyos where extra runoff concentrates but elsewhere they can survive in places like vacant lots, roadside ditches, and at the base of rocky hills.

The flower shown is a male; female flowers have a small undeveloped ovary beneath the petals that becomes the gourd when fertilized. Both male and female flowers are found on the same plant, although they are borne separately in different leaf nodes along the vines. The tuberous root system is quite massive and plays a large role in helping to sustain the plant's growth in dry times.

The 3-4 inch (8-10 cm) wide fruits are striped green and white and fade to tan and white once dried. Coyote melons are quite bitter, but the large white seeds are nutritious and contain about 30% protein and 30% oil, making them a useful food in spite of the unpalatable rind and flesh. I commonly see coyote scats filled with these seeds, many of which are unharmed, thereby making this canine a disperser of this plant. Interestingly, some Native Americans have explained the melon's bitterness in their mythology as being due to the Trickster Coyote wishing to keep the fruits for himself. So when he defecates the seeds, that made them bitter and assured that Coyote would get to keep all the food for himself rather than having to share it with people. Good-tasting melons and squash were not subject to Coyote's pranks, fortunately."

I planted these in a south facing wall in Las Vegas and they thrived despite the desert sun which would scorch a lot of other plants. Th...Read Moreey climbed without support up the stucco wall. They did fall down towards the end of the summer. Plants die back in the winter. Yellow flowers resemble squash flowers and are short lived, but they do pull in pollinators. The gourds look like green pumpkins about the size of a baseball. The leaves are very attractive resembling ivy, Palmate venation hence palmata.

On picking some for seeds out of the ditch by Hackberry I was told by a business owner that coyotes and dogs have been known to eat these...Read More to vomit. Maybe the Natives knew something I don't.