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Fruits and seed cross-pollination, was: Garden layout question

>> Somewhere I have heard that
>> pumpkins can cross pollinate with other veggies.

True. They cross-pollinate with veggies belonging to the same
botanical species. And pumkins and squash _may_ be the same
botanical species. Garden practice is to call "squash" or
"pumpkins" plants that belong to the botanical specie of
Cucurbita pepo and Cucurbita maxima. The difference for the
gardener is not the botanics, it is how the fruit is harvested,
ripe or unripe. This produces the "botanical" confusion.
(I did not mention other Cucurbita species to keep things simple)

>If all you're interested in is the veggies that you are going to grow,
>then plant away. *All* the fruits will be true to the seed you planted.
>(For some reason I think sweet corn is an exception, though for the life
>of me I can't see why.)

Sweet corn is not a fruit, it's seed, simply. Fruits will exhibit the
character of the mother plant, the plant they grow on; and seeds show
the characters of both parents, male and female, together with a lot
of variation.
You give the explanation for that and the right info just below:

>Plants grown from the seeds of these fruit,
>however, will be a different story, as they will be a cross between the
>two parent plants and will not be true to either of them, and will
>probably exhibit a fair amount of variation.



Andreas


-------------------------------------------------
VIVIANI Comp   CH-8833 Samstagern    Switzerland
E-mail: viviani@active.ch  Dr. Andreas Viviani
Tel: +41 1 786 11 16    Fax: +41 1 786 11 25
Homepage:  /http://www2.active.ch/~viviani
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