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My neighbor is growing this vegetable and forgot what kind of gourd it is. Is it a bottle gourd or a type of butternut squash?

gourd

And here's the flower:

enter image description here

yasouser
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1 Answers1

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I'm fairly sure that's a bottle gourd. In my experience butternut squash fruits start out quite ovate and then develop a swelling when they get larger (or don't). Also all the butternut flowers I've seen have been yellow and much more trumpet shaped, and a quick google of bottle gourd flowers shows them to look very much like your photograph.

David Liam Clayton
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  • Aka [Calabash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabash) – benn Aug 10 '18 at 14:12
  • I too thought of them as bottle gourds but the ones I've eaten and familiar with is slim and elongated more like a large cucumber or zucchini. – yasouser Aug 10 '18 at 15:00
  • Looks like these are thai bottle gourd (https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Thai+Bottle+Gourd&FORM=IRIBIP) – yasouser Aug 10 '18 at 20:37
  • What the heck is a white flower doing on a gourd plant? I'll go check with our gourd 'expert' Shule! – stormy Aug 10 '18 at 22:36
  • Lagenaria siceraria is the most common gourd species I know about, and yes, it has white flowers and soft leaves, which look like those of that plant (I'm growing a couple kinds of that species this year, but not the bottle gourd). Snake gourds have cool white flowers, too (if these interest you, you should see those). People call lots of things gourds (but everything I call a gourd would probably have white flowers). The other things people call gourds tend to have other names, too. It's definitely not a butternut squash. I agree about it being a bottle gourd. It looks like one. – Brōtsyorfuzthrāx Aug 11 '18 at 15:01