Botanical indications are, therefore, in favour of a Mexican or Texan origin. It remains to be seen if historical records are in agreement with or contrary to this idea.
It is impossible to discover whether a given Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin name for the pumpkin belongs to one species rather than to another. The form of the fruit is often the same, and the distinctive characters are never mentioned by authors.
There is no figure of the pumpkin in the _Herbarius Pataviæ Impressus_ of 1485, before the discovery of America, but sixteenth-century authors have published plates which may be attributed to it. There are three forms of _Pepones_ figured on page 406 of Dodoens, edition 1557. A fourth, _Pepo rotundus major_, added in the edition of 1616, appears to me to be _C. maxima_. In the drawing of _Pepo oblongus_ of Lobel, _Icones_, 641, the character of the peduncle is clearly defined. The names given to these plants imply a foreign origin; but the authors could make no assertions on this head, all the more that the name of “the Indies” applied both to Southern Asia and America.
Thus historical data do not gainsay the opinion of an American origin, but neither do they adduce anything in support of it.
If the belief that it grows wild in America is confirmed, it may be confidently asserted that the pumpkins cultivated by the Romans and in the Middle Ages were _Cucurbita maxima_, and those of the natives of North America, seen by different travellers in the seventeenth century, were _Cucurbita Pepo_.
+Musk+, or +Melon Pumpkin+—_Cucurbita moschata_, Duchesne.
The _Bon Jardinier_ quotes as the principal varieties of this species pumpkin _muscade de Provence_, _pleine de Naples_, and _de Barbarie_. It is needless to say that these names show nothing as to origin. The species is easily recognized by its fine soft down, the pentagonal peduncle which supports the fruit broadening at the summit; the fruit is more or less covered with a glaucous efflorescence, and the flesh is somewhat musk-scented. The lobes of the calyx are often terminated by a leafy border.[1269] Cultivated in all tropical countries, it is less successful than other pumpkins in temperate regions.
Cogniaux[1270] suspects that it comes from the south of Asia, but he gives no proof of this. I have searched through the floras of the old and new worlds, and I have nowhere been able to discover the mention of the species in a truly wild state. The indications which approach most nearly to it are: (1) In Asia, in the island of Bangka, a specimen verified by Cogniaux, and which Miquel[1271] says is not cultivated; (2) in Africa, in Angola, specimens which Welwitsch says are quite wild, but “probably due to an introduction;” (3) in America, five specimens from Brazil, Guiana, or Nicaragua, mentioned by Cogniaux, without knowing whether they were cultivated, naturalized, or indigenous. These indications are very slight. Rumphius, Blume, Clarke (_Flora of British India_) in Asia, Schweinfurth (Oliver’s _Flora of Trop. Africa_) in Africa, only know it as a cultivated plant. Its cultivation is recent in China,[1272] and American floras rarely mention the species.