the.com/crookneck
the squash so confident it grows its own punctuation mark.
means A type of summer squash (or, sometimes, a variety of pumpkin) distinguished by a long, curved or bent neck at its stem end.
from A plain English compound of "crook" plus "neck." "Crook" comes from Old Norse "krókr," meaning a hook or bend — the same root behind a shepherd's crook and the crook of your elbow — while "neck" is the ordinary Old English "hnecca." Put them together and you get exactly what you see: a squash with a hooked, bent neck. American gardeners had the name in use by the 1800s for these distinctively curved cucurbits.
- signature
- That bent neck is its whole personality.
- native roots
- Cultivated by Indigenous Americans long before Europeans arrived.
- skin tell
- Bumpy yellow skin means fully ripe, not flawed.
- summer squash
- Harvested young, eaten skin, seeds, and all.
delicata squash — winter squash variety with curved neck shape, common in us farmers markets
butternut squash — tan-colored winter squash with distinctive long curved neck, widely cultivated since 1940s