Paintings (1769-1774) by A. N. Duchesne and the history of Cucurbita pepo

Abstract

A. N. Duchesne (1747-1827), a French botanist and horticulturist possessing a keen power of observation for variation in plants, depicted accurately and in painstaking detail the fruits of 98 Cucurbita cultivars and their offspring resulting from cross-pollination, between 1769 and 1774. These 364 drawings of Cucurbita, most of which are watercolour paintings of C. pepo, are preserved in the Central Library of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France, where they are catalogued as manuscript no. 5007. Black-and-white photographs of approximately half of the drawings are housed in the L. H. Bailey Hortorium in Ithaca, New York, USA. The depictions are dated and numbered, with the numbers corresponding to the brief verbal descriptions published in Duchesne's (1786) Essai sur l'histoire naturelle des courges (Paris: Panckoucke). Twenty of the drawings of C. pepo are reproduced and interpreted herein. They include the earliest known pictures of the economically important cocozelle and straightneck types of squash, as well as the ornamental bicolour and crown gourds. Duchesne's collection of domesticated C. pepo contained a far lower proportion of edible-fruited forms than occurs in existing cultigens of this species.