Cantaloupe, honeydew, casaba, Korean melon, and even Armenian cucumber are all forms of one species, the melon (Cucumis melo). What Americans call cantaloupe is actually a netted muskmelon; the original European cantaloupe has a ribbed, lightly netted rind.
Appearance
- Growth form
- An annual vine that trails on the ground or climbs 6–9 ft (2–3 m) on a trellis.
- Leaves
- Rough-textured, roundish to kidney-shaped leaves, often with five angles or shallow lobes and wavy-toothed edges.
- Flowers
- Yellow, saucer-shaped flowers about 1 in (2.5 cm) across. Male flowers usually come in clusters and female flowers grow singly on the same plant. Bees visit the flowers.
- Flowering time
- July–August (North Carolina)
- Fruit
- A many-seeded fruit with a smooth, ribbed, warty, or netted rind in green, yellow, tan, or white. The flesh can be orange, green, or white, and sweet or bland.
Look-alikes
CucumberCucumis sativus
Cucumber fruits are long and cylindrical, green and bumpy or prickly when young. Melons are round to oval and usually smooth, ribbed, or netted.
Why they get mixed upSame genus: both are rough-leaved garden vines with yellow flowers.
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- farm fields
- vegetable gardens
- Range
- Its origin is debated — Africa, Southwest Asia, India, and Central Asia have all been proposed. It's grown worldwide, and the US is one of the larger producers. A small, weedy wild melon also grows from the southeastern US into Mexico.
- Preferred conditions
- A warm-season crop that needs full sun and moist, well-drained soil.
- Flowering
Flowers Jul–Aug
Flowers Jul–Aug
Growing it
- Care
- Sow outdoors after the last frost or start indoors 4–6 weeks earlier. Common problems include cucumber beetles, powdery and downy mildew, gummy stem blight, and ; pickleworms and melonworm moths also feed on the plants.
- Propagation
- Grown from seed. Melon varieties cross with each other easily but don't cross with watermelon, cucumber, pumpkin, or squash.
Name and classification
- About the name
- Growers sort melons into groups: Reticulatus (netted muskmelons, the American "cantaloupe"), Cantalupensis (European cantaloupe), Inodorus (honeydew and casaba), Flexuosus (snake melon or Armenian cucumber), and Makuwa (Korean/Oriental melon), among others.
- Varieties and forms
- Netted muskmelon (American cantaloupe), European cantaloupe, Galia, casaba, canary, Persian melon, and the long, cucumber-like Armenian cucumber.
Culture and stories
- Culture and stories
- The name "cantaloupe" comes from Cantalupo, a papal summer estate in Italy where these melons were grown in the 1700s.
- Early European settlers in the Americas grew honeydew and casaba melons in the 1600s, and several Native American communities in New Mexico, including Acoma, Cochiti, and Isleta, still keep melon varieties first brought by the Spanish.
- Because cantaloupe rinds can carry Salmonella and Listeria, food-safety advice is to scrub the melon before cutting it.
More species to explore
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