Morphological Characteristics of Selected Flower Parts of Cucurbita pepo L. Styriaca Group

Abstract

The study aimed to determine the variability of some morphological characters on flowers of selected plants within the population of ESO variety of Styrian oil pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo L. Styriaca Group). For experimental evaluation, we used two years (2020–2021) measurements of 1792 selected pistillate and staminate flowers from individual plants grown in the field conditions in the Kolíňany settlement (the Slovak Republic). We determined for staminate flowers the range for the length of petals (25.00–134.00 mm), width of petals (14.00–92.00 mm), width of sepals (3.00–31.00 mm), height of sepals (3.00–34.00 mm), length of anther (4.00–24.00 mm), weight of flowers (0.97–11.81 g), weight of petals (0.27–7.14 g), weight of sepals (0.07–2.70 g) and weight of stamens (0.05–6.21 g). High degrees of variability were confirmed for all characters. We determined for pistillate flowers the range for the length of petals (41.00–121.00 mm), width of petals (10.00–100.00 mm), length of the pistil (5.70–15.72 mm), weight of flower (2.91–33.59 g), weight of petals (0.90–9.92 g), weight of sepals (0.61–2.93 g), and weight of pistil (0.07–1.72 g). Variability for traits confirmed moderate to high degree of variability. Our obtained results can serve as a basis for the taxonomy of the species (morphometric approach), for its selection, but also culinary purposes, where edible flowers are still used to a greater extent in gastronomy in the preparation of meals. For this purpose, genotypes with the production of larger flowers could be particularly interesting.