Yes… I’m curious as I intend to grow the grab bag mix, which I understood contains fig-leaf gourd
So it’s like a watermelon with seeds throughout the flesh? Interested. I haven’t looked into them much and would have assumed it to be just a different squash.
If it’ll grow here, I’m happy to put a few seeds in the ground, document the growth, and collect and return seeds for one accession! I’d honestly love to be part of such a project.
It has no sweetness. I’m going to defer to a Oaxacan person on why these are tasty and get back to you, because I feel like I won’t give the flesh part proper justice 
I just meant how the seeds are dispersed in the flesh like a watermelon is.
Is the flesh very different taste/texture than the squash we’re used to with maxima, moschata, and pepo? From the pic it looks very watermelon like. I would have guessed it to have a texture like zucchini or cucumber.
Shark-fin melon gets used in Japan as a substitute for the cartilage in a shark’s fin. Tasteless, with a rubbery texture.
In Guatemala it gets marmelated or candied. Or turned into syrup.
Young fruits get fried as summer squash. (Bland flavor).
I also received this from USDA
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Oh, that’s cool!
@DebbieA You’re the moschata seed steward this year, right? There might be some good opportunities for moschata there!
@anna Are we planning to do an argyrosperma grex this year? That’s another squash species that may be worth exploring, if there’s interest in it!
It’s not on the list yet, but if you’d like to explore, I’m open to it. Just bear in mind that I’m aiming to keep the total number of mixes (across all crops) around 50. We did close to 25 next year, and I don’t want to take on more than we/ I can handle. So once we have the full list of mixes folks want to do, we may need to narrow down. So far though, there’s room.
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@Joseph_Lofthouse When Bob @ USDA says that there are moschata accessions that are in need of regeneration, does that mean they’re not going to show up in the GRIN online database? Is there a way to find out what they are before making a commitment?
By the way, I think I contributed luffa gourd seeds to the Fukuoka grab bag. Those are also black seeds. Can you tell them apart from the shark’s fin melon?
@UnicornEmily I would be interested to grow out an accession of shark’s fin melon, but I also have the seed from the Fukuoka grab bag as well as a variety I purchased this spring:
You’ll have to let me know how far apart they need to be.
The inside reminds me of winter melon (wax gourd) which is a different species, but also a tasteless sort of filler vegetable used in Chinese cooking during the winter months. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a shark’s fin melon in the Asian market, but maybe I didn’t know what I was looking at. I’ve never eaten it, although I have had real shark’s fin soup (I’m cringing as I write this. The legacy of a childhood in an Asian family that enjoyed exotic foods for special occasions!) All this makes me wonder if we could find gardeners in the Asian community here in the US who may be growing their own shark’s fin melon, perhaps from seed from their home country.
@H.B I found this page which says the shark’s fin melon plant can produce 50 or more fruits:
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Ahhh!
The shark fin melon vine grows as a perennial in warm climates, reaching peak productivity from its second or third year onward.
Maybe those 50-fruits-per-plant harvest come from three-year-old plants! That would make sense.
The website also mentions pruning, which is very much what I would do with any cucurbit that decided it could take over my entire garden.
On the black squashy seeds note, turns out I’ve got just one candidate in the grab bag. Not knowing what ficifolia seed looks like, it could also just be an intense watermelon seed.
It’s probably ficifolia. I doubt it’s watermelon; we had a watermelon grex.
Ha ha ha, don’t worry about them being too big or productive! Just prune a plant if it’s sprawling too much. That might even encourage it to fruit more quickly – I’ve heard many tales of people pruning a cucurbit that was sprawling too much without having made any female flowers, and then it immediately starting to make female flowers as a response. That’s what I plan to do next time I have a cucurbit that wants to sprawl and is being a lazypants sluggard about starting fruit. 
ficifolia seeds tend toward smoothness, and have bumps near the radical that parallel the radical. They look like dark colored zuchhini seeds.
luffa seeds tend toward roughness, and have bumps that transect the radical. They look different than zucchini seeds.
Good idea. Reading and thinking about Fukuoka’s natural farming has made me hesitant to prune anything, as it seems for fruit trees at least that in many cases you’re committing to the otherwise unnecessary labor of pruning them for the rest of their lifespan.
It’s just an annual melon though. Hard to see the harm unless you’re needing to do it every year, for lots of plants, insert-other-effort-magnifier-here.
Seems like luffa then. I thought I knew what these seeds looked like, but I’ve only ever seen one or two sets of seeds from one variety a couple times
Huh. I can see why you thought that might be a watermelon seed. It sure looks like one.
It doesn’t look like a fig-leaf gourd seed, or at least not like the ones I have. So, I’m guessing you’re right, and it’s a luffa.
What did Fukuoka say about pruning fruit trees? That seems like an odd thing to say, so I’m curious about what he meant.
As far as I know, apple trees are perfectly happy to grow 40 feet tall and have all the fruits waaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of reach, so all they’re good for is hitting the ground in a spatter of gunk that could possibly injure somebody. We have one like that in a local park. Instead of being a delight, it’s a nuisance.
Same goes for the 30-foot-tall mulberry tree in one of my neighbors’ yards.
And the 40-foot-tall mulberry tree in another neighbor’s yard. And the 40-foot-tall pear tree in that same neighbor’s yard.
And a whole host of others I’ve seen.
As far as I know, unpruned fruit trees eventually become unharvestable and do nothing but create a huge mess that attracts rodents and bugs.
Update! I sent this e-mail:
Hi, Bob! I’m organizing things around Cucurbita ficifolia for Going to Seed this year.
I have three questions for you!
First:
How much of an isolation distance do you want between varieties or accessions?
Second:
How many plants per accession do you want grown?
Third:
Do you have any information about specific accessions? Any information would be delightful.
Some traits that are likely to be of especial interest are being day neutral, drought tolerance, flavor of the fruit (especially if it has more flavor than is usual for the species), quickness to fruit, ease of cutting the rind, and anything at all that’s unusual and special for the species.
Geographic locations of where specific accessions were gathered would also be valuable.
Here’s the reply I received:
Hello Emily,
-
There should be enough space between accessions to ensure that cross-pollination does not occur. That’s vague – but the best I can do. It will depend on various factors. Better safe than sorry - so fewer accessions placed further apart is preferable to more accessions that are closer together. Hand pollination is also an option.
-
Given the situation, 6-12 would be sufficient, or possibly fewer. Seed supplies and germination % may be quite low for some accessions so (in this imperfect world) flexibility is essential.
-
We can provide some basic info on the origin of the accessions. Unfortunately, since they have never been previously grown by the genebank (or a cooperator) we have no info on them other than what is in the public database. When the seed are sent, we’ll provide all available info in a spreadsheet.
I hope that helps.
Always here to answer questions. Don’t hesitate to contact me.
Best,
Bob
Here are my thoughts! Let me know what you think.
Since the plants can be big, 6-12 plants may be a lot for a small space. But pruning can help! If you have a small space and want to grow an accession, I recommend growing as many plants as you can squeeze in, and pruning off the excess vines after the first fruits are set.
The point of growing out an accession is to get fresh seeds that maintain as much genetic diversity as possible, so we don’t have to prioritize sheer number of seeds or fruit. In fact, it’s probably better if we don’t.
One fruit each from ten plants would be better than five fruits each from two.
For anyone who’s planning to grow more than one accession, let’s stick with whatever isolation distances are usually recommended for squashes, and use hand-pollination if that isn’t feasible.
The flowers look like pepo, maxima, moschata, and mixta flowers, no surprise since they’re in the same genus, so they should be extremely easy to hand-pollinate.
Are there any more questions you’d like me to ask?
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Internet shows that ficifolia does sometimes cross with other squash (pepo, moschata, maxima) but it’s a dead end unless you do rescue etc. So having it separated from other cucurbits to assure the seeds are true and not going to grow dead end plants sounds like a good precaution.
I have too much going on to volunteer for this one. Maybe in the future once I have a handle on my own squash landraces.
SSE recommends 800 feet to half a mile of isolation distance. I can grow them around the side of my garage which will be 100-200 feet from any other squash with a building in between.
I could clear a 10’+ clearing in the woods at the back of the property and drop a yard-cart of compost and grow some there, to get the 800’, but my back is messed up and we’re still waiting for the snow to clear, and I’m not sure that much of a clearing would be enough to get sun onto the leaves.
In any case, I don’t think I should have more than one accession, but I’m still willing/eager to grow one for this project.
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The side of your garage sounds like an excellent growing space!
I suspect fig-leaf gourds can be safely grown right next to plants of other species in the Cucurbita genus; interspecies crosses tend to be pretty hard to get by accident. If those far more experienced than I am know better, please correct me.