Garden Forwardedible
Courgette
Cucurbita pepo
Growing guidance
Horticultural figures below are practitioner estimates for planning, pending expert review. The botanical record further down is sourced and verifiable.
Current-climate suitability
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Future-climate resilience
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Sun
Full sun
Soil moisture
average, moisture-retentive
Heat tolerance
Up to about 38°C
Cold tolerance
Down to about 4°C
Waterlogging tolerance
2/5
Drought tolerance
1/5
Mature size
0.5–0.9 m tall, 1.2 m spread
Seasonal interest
Summer · Yellow flower
Maintenance
medium
Wildlife supported
General wildlife value 3/5 (verified species relationships are shown only where structured data exists)
Known risks or warnings
Collapses without steady water; frost-tender.
Toxicity: none
Verified botanical record
- Accepted scientific name
- Cucurbita pepo L.
- Family
- Cucurbitaceae (Cucurbitales)
- Rank and status
- species · accepted
- GBIF record
- Taxon 2874508
Recorded as introduced in: Alabama, Albania, Amazonia colombiana: sur del departamento del Vichada; el suroriente del Meta; todo el territorio de los departamentos de Amazonas, Caquetá, Guainía, Guaviare, Putumayo y Vaupés; la Bota Caucana; y las vertientes amazónicas de Nariño (la parte alta de los ríos Guamuez, Sucio, San Miguel y Aguarico), Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Arkansas, Assam, Austria, Azores, Bahamas, Baleares, Baltic States and 107 further regions
Ranges are exactly as recorded in the GBIF source checklists and may be incomplete for widely cultivated species.
Cucurbita pepo is a cultivated plant of the genus Cucurbita. It yields varieties of winter squash and pumpkin, but the most widespread varieties belong to the subspecies Cucurbita pepo subsp. pepo, called summer squash. It has been domesticated in the Americas for thousands of years, from where it was spread by early colonisers to Europe and later across the rest of the Old World in the context of the Columbian Exchange. Some authors maintain that C. pepo is derived from C. texana, while others suggest that C. texana is merely feral C. pepo. They have a wide variety of uses, especially as a food source. C. pepo seems more closely related to C. fraterna, though disagreements exist about the exact nature of that connection, too.
Description from Wikipedia — Cucurbita pepo (CC BY-SA), shortened and unedited in substance.
Native status and geographic context
- United Kingdom: climate-suitable
- United States: climate-suitable
- Australia: climate-suitable
Native status is never inferred from climate similarity. Plants restricted or invasive in a jurisdiction are excluded from recommendations there.
Demonstration data. Climate, plant and retailer records shown here are realistic samples awaiting horticultural validation and live data connections.