Real leaf and seed set of Kabocha Squash - Cucurbita maxima specimen. Leaf laminated in plastic sheet and seeds encased in clear acrylic material. The specimens are clear, transparent and indestructible. Safe, authentic and completely unbreakable product put the specimens right at your fingertips!

Anyone can safely explore the specimens from every angle. 

Size of the laminated sheet: 7.6 x 7.6 cm (3 inch)

Size of lucite block: 39x26x14 mm (1.5x1.0x0.6 inch).

Weight of the lucite block is 20 g and 40 g with laminated sheet and packaging.

These are an ideal learning aid for students and kids and also a very good collectible item for every body.

These are handmade real specimen crafts. Each one will be a bit different (specimen size, color and posture) even in the same production batch.
The pictures in the listing are just for reference as we are selling multiple pieces with same pictures.

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Kabocha Squash - Cucurbita maxima

Order: Cucurbitales   Family: Cucurbitaceae   Genus: Cucurbita

Cucurbita maxima, one of at least four species of cultivated squash, is one of the most diverse domesticated species. This species originated in South America from the wild Cucurbita andreana over 4000 years ago. The two species hybridize quite readily but have noticeably different calcium levels.

Kabocha is a type of winter squash, a Japanese variety of the species Cucurbita maxima. It is also called kabocha squash or Japanese pumpkin in North America.

Kabocha is hard on the outside with knobbly-looking skin. It is shaped like a squat pumpkin and has a dull-finished, deep-green skin with some celadon-to-white stripes and an intense yellow-orange color on the inside. In many respects it is similar to buttercup squash, but without the characteristic protruding "cup" on the blossom (bottom) end. An average kabocha weighs two to three pounds, but a large squash can weigh as much as eight pounds.

All squashes were domesticated in Mesoamerica. In 1997, new evidence suggested that domestication occurred 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, a few thousand years earlier than previous estimates. That would be 4,000 years earlier than the domestication of maize and beans, the other major food plant groups in Mesoamerica.

Kabocha is available all year but is best in late summer and early fall. Kabocha is primarily grown in Japan, China, South Korea, Thailand, California, Florida, Hawaii, Southwestern Colorado, Mexico, Tasmania, Tonga, New Zealand, Chile, Jamaica, and South Africa, but is widely adapted for climates that provide a growing season of 100 days or more.