this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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Why are there no wild pumpkins, cucumbers etc. growing? I never sawanuy of these randomly grow in nature, but they have to have been there.
Apparently the wild forms are native to Mexico and South America, so none growing in Europe or the US. Also, it is one of the earliest domesticated plant families - cultivated beginning more than 8,000 years ago - so the domestic varieties overwhelmingly outnumber the wild ones. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbita
There is several wild cucurbitacae in the Caribbean, for example you can find this one:
It's called "Ti konkonm" which mean small cucumber in creole
This is what a wild cucumber looks like, before domestication changed it through human preference selection (originates from India):
Same with the other (in a botanical sense) fruits, probably.
We tend to evolve wild plants in a way they can't compete in the wild. That being said I'm not sure how we did that for those in particular.
The midwest has at least five native species of Cucurbitaceae. The desert southwest has some species as well.