Are you one of those people who thinks that even though gnarly, twisted gourds can make colorful Halloween centerpieces and cutesy bird houses, they are basically pretty weird? I always dismissed these peculiar bulbous fruits (yup, botanically they are fruits) as fairly useless garden oddities.
In fact they seemed a little creepy, a perfect example of nature gone wrong. Since they are hollow and have little edible pulp compared to their pumpkin and squash cousins, they struck me as a huge waste of garden space. I’d read that early humans cultivated them widely and thought this was very strange. (Pumpkins, on the other hand, can be wonderful eating, such as in this delightful pumpkin bread pudding.)
Now I realize I totally missed the point. Althouth some varieties, like Asian snake gourds, are actually fleshy and grown to be eaten, most gourds were valued precisely because of their large, empty, bowl-like cavities. With the tools and skills to readily create ceramic, glass, metal or even wooden vessels still in the distant future, clever ancient peoples just lopped off gourd tops, removed the seeds and turned the remaining roomy concave portions into cups, bowls, bottles, canteens, jars and many other simple containers.
Sometimes, they carved, painted, and polished whole gourds and prized them as art or ritual objects or as musical instruments such as rattles and drums and even guitars. In one New Guinea tribal society, long pipe-like gourds were used as sheaths for, um, male appendages. Even now in parts of South America a traditional tea-like beverage called yerba maté is still drunk from calabash goblets, and some Native American tribes still fashion gourds into ceremonial rattles, shakers and clubs like those above right. (Native Americans also made great use of cranberries; details are here.)
I finally “get” gourds and this Halloween and am seeing them in a whole new light. Maybe replacing these sustainably produced, biodegradable, naturally lightweight and sturdy containers with the vast array of environmentally unfriendly plastic-ware, bottles, and jugs that litter our landscape really wasn’t progress? Maybe we should get back to gourds again? At least, it’s time to give them a little more respect. What do you think?
Happy Halloween!
Wow, thanks for sharing this interesting info. You make gourds sound like so much fun. I had no idea that horses wouldn't eat them–maybe that was another reason people always planted them. I can imagine that autumn just doesn't seem the same now that you live in a condo.
When I lived out it the country I grew gourds and loved them! They climbed up the fences that bordered our property with the horse field next door. Horses do not like to eat gourds, so they were safe. I used them to decorate inside and outside my house every fall. I would toss a few along the edge of the fence after Thanksgiving and they reseeded themselves for the following spring. I live in a condo now, and I miss my gourds.