07/13/2026
Hooray, let’s talk about the reproductive process of the pumpkin!😂
Starting in the top left and going clockwise
1) This is the earliest you’ll see a female flower, still in the growing tip. If you noticed it’s like a little ball, called an o***y, with a crown. It’s a tiny flower on top of a tiny pumpkin.
2) In the next picture, it to the right, this is a female flower that will open in a few days. Just a more mature version of picture 1. Notice the little pumpkin (o***y) under the flower. Just like most everything else, the female carries the developing baby.
3 and 4) This is the mature female flower. Inside is the stigma - each lobe of the stigma indicates one for the pumpkin, in this case 4. On the morning the flower opens, it is fertile from roughly 0600-1000. It will open in a big bright orange flower, as though it was advertising that it is time. This one opened this morning and was not pollinated, as I don’t like the location. Pollen needs to be brought from the male flower to the female flower. Each grain of pollen will correspond to one seed in the finished fruit. Many types of pollinators - here you can see cucumber beetles which are disease transmitting (to the plant) buttholes - but bees are the standard, moths as well - and I do the real job. I will literally dump pollen from male flowers, into the female flowers, on the morning it opens. And with any luck, the squirrels stay away, and we’re growing!
In the reply below, I’ll show a male flower for comparison’s sake!
