Difference between 南瓜 and 北瓜?

[Gary Soup]

Here's a vegetable (or are they fruits?) nomenclature that confuses me. Wenlin translates them both as "pumpkin" but my wife says they are differernt. I know that the common American "Halloween" pumpkin is ususally called 南瓜, but what is a 北瓜 in American parlance?

[in_lab]

南瓜 is used not just for pumpkin, but also for some kinds of squash. (I don't know anything about 北瓜.)

[comego]

there is no 北瓜 in Chinese parlance.

[miss_China_so_much]

I never heard 北瓜. Also there are 西瓜 (Watermelon) and 冬瓜 (a type of white gourd, not 东瓜).

[Gary Soup]

there is no 北瓜 in Chinese parlance

1. 北瓜 is a term my wife knows from Shanghai. She said it's a orange-yellow melon, smaller than a pumpkin, and reputed to be good for treating asthma.

2. 北瓜 is in the ABC dictionary used by Wenlin, though it only translates it as "pumpkin."

3. Baidu didn't reveal much, but I found this link identifying 北瓜 as cucurbita pepo, which further confuses the issue because cucurbita pepo covers a whole range of melons including the common field pumpkin.

I'm guessing the term covers what we call "summer squash" in the US.

[currahee]

北瓜 tastes sweet........... i ate it everyday when i was a little child living with my grandparents in the rural area.

[Jo-Ann]

Last evening, I posted to this thread, but I must not have clicked on submit!!

Essentially, most of my dictionaries have 西瓜 translated as pumpkin. But DeFrancis' ABC dictionary lists 北瓜 as pumpkin, as well as one other dictionary. DeFrancis also has 'wo guo' defined as pumpkin. The wo is man/ren on the left with he/grain over nu/female on the right. Meaning an old word for Japan.

NJSTAR, online, also has 北瓜 as pumpkin.

[Gary Soup]

Another Shanghainese acquaintance avowed that there is such a melon as 北瓜. He said that it's used for ornamental and medicinal purposes, but not eaten otherwise. There is apparently a tradition in Zhejiang province of carving sentimental inscriptions into 北瓜 and then hanging them from a trellis or from branches, or setting them on a tripod.

[cjbaker]

What people here in 宝鸡 call 南瓜 are very similar to pumpkins, and I used them to make 南瓜排 (pumpkin pie) and carve 南瓜灯 (jack-o-lanterns) on 万圣节 (Halloween). The shape, skin, and flesh, though, are definitely not exactly the same variety as we're used to in the US.