What Part of The Plant is a Pumpkin [Confusion Solved]

Do you know the Halloween-favorite Pumpkin is cooked as a vegetable and eaten as raw fruit or salad at the same time?

The thicker main vine directly attached to the roots produces secondary and tertiary vines called runners.

The round, ribbed, fleshy fruit and other parts like flowers and leaves are produced on those runners.

Overview of Pumpkin Plant

Pumpkin is a low-calorie food rich in vitamins and minerals. You can eat this delicious meal as a salad, dessert, soup, and even as a butter substitute.

However, the Pumpkins crossed with wild plants can be extremely bitter and poison you even with a few bites.

What Really Is a Pumpkin?

The actual definition of a Pumpkin, whether a fruit or a vegetable, depends upon two approaches: study and use.

Traditionally, the ones we cook before eating are vegetables, while the ones with a sweet, tangy taste that we can eat raw are fruits.

However, Botany defines a vegetable as any edible parts like roots, stems, or leaves, whereas fruit develops from a flower and bears seed.

So, Pumpkins are fruits growing on a woody stem attached to their vines that bears both male and female flowers.

This is also called squash and contains pulpy flesh with many seeds covered in a yellow shell that is used as a vegetable. 

These characters define Pumpkin as berry, but they are also called gourds as they fall under the genus Cucurbita.

Interestingly, all the parts of a Pumpkin plant, like roots, hollow stems, lobed leaves, flowers, and fruits, are deliciously edible. Even the seeds that contain pepita inside taste amazing.

If you want to harvest your Pumpkins and store them for months, cut the fruit with a sterilized shear in September- October, including about 4 inches of the stem.