Food

Moon and Stars watermelon

Citrullus lanatus (Moon and Stars landrace)

Also known as: Sun, Moon, and Stars watermelon, Cherokee Moon and Stars

An heirloom watermelon variety with continuous Amish, Mennonite, and Cherokee cultivation in the U.S. since at least the 1920s. Distinctive: dark green rind covered in bright yellow spots — the small spots scattered like stars, the larger spots ('moons') larger and irregularly placed across the surface. Foliage shows the same yellow-spotting pattern. Flesh is dark red, sweet, with a high-quality melt-in-the-mouth texture; seeds are dark brown. Disappeared from American mainstream seed catalogs by the 1950s; presumed extinct. Recovered in 1981 when an Amish gardener in Macon, Missouri responded to a Seed Savers Exchange newspaper appeal for the variety with seed his family had continuously grown since the 1920s. Slow Food USA Ark of Taste species. Now widely available through heritage seed channels.

Cultural

The Moon and Stars watermelon was a recognized commercial variety in U.S. seed catalogs from approximately the 1880s through the 1940s, then disappeared from mainstream seed availability by the 1950s as commercial agriculture standardized around uniformly-skinned varieties. The variety was presumed extinct through the 1960s and 1970s; multiple seed-saving organizations attempted to locate surviving seedstock without success.

In 1981, Kent Whealy of the [[seed-savers-exchange|Seed Savers Exchange]] placed a newspaper appeal asking for any surviving Moon and Stars seedstock. Merle Van Doren, an Amish gardener from Macon, Missouri, responded with seed his family had continuously grown since the 1920s — passed through three generations of family seed-saving without ever entering commercial seed channels. The recovered seed was multiplied and is now widely available through [[seed-savers-exchange|Seed Savers Exchange]], Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and dozens of other heritage seed companies.

The recovery story is one of the foundational case studies of the modern American heirloom-seed movement and is repeatedly cited as evidence of why community [[seed-saving|seed saving]] — the practice of family seed-savers maintaining varieties for generations through purely-domestic cultivation — is irreplaceable.

The variety has also been continuously cultivated by some Cherokee gardeners and is sometimes called Cherokee Moon and Stars in that context; the relationship between the Cherokee and Amish/Mennonite seedkeeper traditions of the variety is undocumented but suggests parallel preservation lines.

Practical

Vine habit; fruits 12–25 lbs. Skin is dark green with bright yellow spotting in the characteristic small-stars-and-large-moons pattern. Flesh is dark red, dense, sweet, with notably good texture for an heirloom [[watermelon|watermelon]]. Seeds are dark brown, large, with the characteristic dark-line-around-edge of older [[watermelon|watermelon]] varieties. Vines and leaves carry the same yellow-spotting pattern, making the variety identifiable in the field even before fruiting.

Production is reliable in any U.S. region with adequate summer heat (zones 4–9). Growing season ~85–95 days from transplant to fruit maturity.

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Cultural

Practical

See also

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