Re: green

Ive tried to stay out of the green/orange debate, and personally, I dont care a lot which way weighoff sites choose to judge color.

But from a genetic perspective, I think its clear that there are two different greens. One case is a fruit with orange skin which gets greenish over time, though often part of the surface area stays orange or yellow. One year I had a fruit covered with two small blankets  one dark, dark blue, the other white. The side under the dark blanket was smooth and orange. There was a sharp, straight dividing line which corresponded exactly to the edge of the dark blanket, then the side under the white blanket had more cantalouping, and even the smoother parts of the skin turned quite green.

This past year I had the pleasure of growing my first true squash. It was a beauty. From the beginning it was green, green, green. By the end of the season, it too had some cantalouping and roughness on the skin. But the base color of this fruit was unquestionably beautiful blue-green. No orange anywhere.

My belief is that the base orange fruits with greening toward maturity are greatly influenced, if not completely controlled by environment. Is there a genetic component to the schizoid two-color fruits? Perhaps. But the true blue-green squash is clearly genetic, and would be much easier to identify genetically and grow intentionally. One could not always trust a squash ruling for making crosses, however. It would be necessary to confirm that the base color of a fruit being considered for a cross was truly blue-green and that it wasnt a late crossover.

Beth


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