AOBPreview originally published online on May 10, 2006
Annals of Botany 2006 98(1):41-47; doi:10.1093/aob/mcl082
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company 2006
First Known Image of Cucurbita in Europe, 1503–1508
1 Agricultural Research Organization, Newe Ya'ar Research Center, PO Box 1021, Ramat Yishay 30-095, Israel, 2 INRA, Unité de Génétique & Amélioration des Fruits et Légumes, Domaine St Maurice, BP 94, 84143, Montfavet cedex, France and 3 Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, 625 Agriculture Mall Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2010, USA
* For correspondence. E-mail hsparis{at}agri.gov.il
Received: 1 February 2006 Returned for revision: 14 February 2006 Accepted: 22 February 2006 Published electronically: 10 May 2006
• Background The genus Cucurbita (pumpkin, squash, gourd) is native to the Americas and diffused to other continents subsequent to the European contact in 1492. For many years, the earliest images of this genus in Europe that were known to cucurbit specialists were the two illustrations of C. pepo pumpkins that were published in Fuchs' De Historia Stirpium, 1542. Images of fruits of two Cucurbita species, drawn between 1515 and 1518, were recently discovered in the Villa Farnesina in Rome.
• Findings An even earlier image of Cucurbita exists in the prayer book, Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne, illustrated by Jean Bourdichon in Touraine, France, between 1503 and 1508. This image, which shows a living branch bearing flowers and fruits, had not been examined and analysed by cucurbit specialists until now. The image is identified as depicting Cucurbita pepo subsp. texana. Unlike some of the fruits of Cucurbita depicted in the Villa Farnesina a decade later, this image does not depict an esculent and does not constitute evidence of early European contact with New World agriculture. Based on the descriptive, ecological and geographical accounts of C. pepo subsp. texana in the wild, the idea is considered that the image was based on an offspring of a plant found growing along the Gulf Coast of what is now the United States.
Key words: Cucurbita pepo, Lagenaria siceraria, Cucumis sativus, Bryonia dioica, Cucurbitaceae, crop dispersal, crop history, plant iconography
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