Put down that pumpkin spice latte (which doesn’t have any actual pumpkin in it, by the way) and check out these facts about everyone’s favorite gourd.

Word Origins

Origin of the word pumpkin: In 1584, French explorer Jacques Cartier visited what’s now Canada and reported seeing grow melons. The French then called them pompions, which means “ripe.” That made its way into English as “pumpkins.”

Jack-o-Lantern

The whole “carve a scary face into a pumpkin” to make a jack-o-lantern thing began in Ireland hundreds of years ago for the Halloween predecessor holiday called Samhain. Except they didn’t use pumpkins — they used turnips.

Varieties

There are about 50 different varieties of pumpkin in the world. Some of the more colorfully name ones: Full Moon, Old Zebs, Cotton Candy (it’s white), La Estrella, Cinderella, Little Boo, Atlantic Giant, Wee-Be-Little (it’s tiny), and Halloween in Paris (it comes from France).

Howden Field is the varietal name of the “classic” pumpkin — the large, round, and orange kind.

Harvest Time

As luck would have it, October is the time for the pumpkin harvest in the U.S. Of the one billion pumpkins grown in America each year, 80 percent of them are ready to pick in the days leading up to Halloween.

Source of Protein

An ounce of pumpkin seeds has virtually the same amount of protein as an ounce of salmon.

Fruit vs. Gourd

Pumpkins are squash, which means they’re a fruit, but also a gourd. They’re in the same family as other thick-skinned produce like watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, zucchini, and cucumbers.

Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin pie is a distinctly American food — colonists used the fruit, abundant in the New World, to make English-style pies. Pumpkin was combined with milk, spices, and honey (but not sugar). 

Beer!

The pilgrims, however, made beer out of pumpkins, combining it with persimmons, hops, and maple sugar.

Folk Remedies

Two old folk remedies…that don’t work: An application of smashed pumpkin can both cure a snakebite and make freckles disappear.