Pumpkin Patch Problems
Pumpkins belong to the same plant family as cucumbers and these summer favorites.
What are melons?
Rather than producing fall color, the destruction of this pigment allows previously hidden yellow and orange colors to become visible.
What is chlorophyll?
The legendary creature reportedly sighted near Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in the 1960s is known by this name.
What is the Mothman?
This mysterious region of the Atlantic is associated in popular culture with unexplained disappearances.
What is the Bermuda Triangle?
Bats belong to this mammalian order, whose name translates approximately to “hand-wing.”
What is Chiroptera?
This genus includes many familiar pumpkins and squashes.
What is Cucurbita?
These pigments are responsible for many yellow and orange colors seen in fall leaves.
What are carotenoids?
This Greek-derived term describes an intense fear of ghosts.
What is phasmophobia?
This single word, carved into a post, became the most enduring clue connected with the disappearance of the Roanoke colonists.
What is CROATOAN?
The delay between an emitted sound and its returning echo allows an animal to estimate this property of an object.
What is distance?
The thick stalk connecting a pumpkin to its vine is known by this botanical term.
What is the peduncle?
This layer develops where a leaf's stem meets the branch and eventually allows the leaf to detach.
What is the abscission layer?
In Appalachian folklore, hearing the cry of this nocturnal bird near a home was sometimes interpreted as a dark omen.
What is the whip-poor-will?
This undeciphered writing system appears on artifacts discovered primarily at archaeological sites belonging to the ancient Indus civilization.
What is the Indus script?
Owls possess asymmetrical ear openings primarily to improve their ability to determine this aspect of a sound source.
What is its vertical location or elevation?
This Greek word meaning “large melon” eventually evolved through French and English forms into the word pumpkin.
What is pepon?
Unlike carotenoids, these red and purple pigments are actively synthesized inside the leaf during autumn rather than simply revealed when chlorophyll disappears.
What are anthocyanins?
This owl's call is commonly remembered using the phrase, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?”
What is the barred owl?
This mysterious manuscript, filled with strange illustrations and undeciphered writing, is named after the bookseller who acquired it in 1912.
What is the Voynich Manuscript?
This terminal portion of a bat's echolocation call rapidly increases as the bat closes in on prey.
What is the terminal buzz?
Pumpkin vines produce separate male and female flowers on the same individual plant. Botanists describe this reproductive arrangement using this term.
What is monoecious?
During fall leaf senescence, chloroplasts break down while much of this green, light-absorbing pigment disappears.
What is chlorophyll?
This legendary creature from New Jersey folklore is commonly associated with the state's Pine Barrens.
What is the Jersey Devil?
In 1872, this merchant ship was discovered drifting in the Atlantic with its cargo and many personal belongings still aboard, but the crew mysteriously missing.
What is the Mary Celeste?
This nocturnal bird family’s scientific name, Caprimulgidae, comes from a Latin word meaning “goatsucker,” based on an ancient myth that the birds drank milk from goats.
What are nightjars?