Five years ago, I bought some mini gourd seeds online and grew them in my garden. They were your normal looking gourd plant, that grew 2" hard-shelled gourds. Some plants produced round gourds, some produced bottle shaped gourds. All of the gourds were typical, green, hard-shelled gourds.

That was the last time I grew anything in my garden until this year. While I was preparing my garden this year, I came across one of the mini's from 5 years ago. It broke open and I turned it under and a few weeks later, little gourd seedlings started popping up. So I planted 6 of them...and I'm completely baffled by these plants.

They are some mutant mix of a squash plant and a gourd plant. The stems on the leaves are long, like a squash. The leaves are shaped like a squash. The stems and vines are covered in little spikes, like a squash. The base of the vine (where it comes out of the ground) is dark green, like a squash. BUT it's vining like a gourd. And it's producing small gourds. BUT these gourds are nothing like the ones I grew 5 years ago. They are different sizes, different shapes (some bottle shaped, some squash shaped), different colors (some green, some yellow), and some even have bumps like an ornamental gourds. But they are all hard, like a gourd.

Has anyone ever experienced this before? Is this just the result of some crazy cross polination? Maybe with a squash? Or an ornamental gourd? I'm truley baffled by this whole thing. :)