What you see: Narrow, angular bumps on your honeynut squash.
What it is: Healed wounds.
Eat or toss: Eat! The squash’s flesh, that is. The scabs will likely be too woody for eating (though if you’ve ever tried one, let us know!).
Warty bumps on squash are natural “bandages”
The “warts” that often pop up on squashes are actually just oversized, 3-D bandages. A squash will dispatch the woody stuff to seal up wounds and prevent infection.
Once the squash has healed up, the scab will remain, but the orange interior should be perfectly fine to eat.
So why does this honeynut squash have such tidily shaped warts? Cornell University vegetable breeder Michael Mazourek told me the shape of the scabs can be traced back to the shape of the wound. So long and thin scabs like these could be the result of narrow cracks or scratches on the squash’s skin.
A squash’s skin might crack if, say, due to an influx of water, the fruit grows faster than its cells can keep up with. (Produce including cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes and plums often responds in interesting ways to sudden growth spurts.)
Mazourek, who played a central role in developing the honeynut, said that rubbing against a vine or sharp rock can also lead to a wound in the cat-pupil shape we’re seeing here.
But let’s say you’re not seeing narrow bumps like these, but rather circular “warts” on your squash? Here’s a possible explanation from Mazourek, “Usually round ones are when they sit in mud and think about making roots.”
