Gourd Identification Charts

This chart presented for educational purposes

This Gourd ID chart was a labor of love.  If began by spending days of searching the internet for different lagenaria types, those already known by us and others that we know to be common varieties but needed an accurate representation for as well as searching several web sites and other known resources to acquire the mean or average size, height, or length of each gourd.  Once this information was gathered, a scale was determined for the purpose of making each variety as accurate as we possibly could in relation to its size when compared side by side with another.  The scale was determined and used for the first two pages to display the medium and large sized gourds at approximately 1 cm= 3 inches. If we used this same scale for the smaller gourds, the smallest ones would be difficult to give and accurate representation of that people would be able to see and appreciate, so the third page was done in a scale to approximately 1 cm= 1 inch, which gave us 3 pages representing 34 different varieties of hard shelled gourds. (article continued below)

Digital chart © Dan Dunkin 2003

The Gourd Reserve.

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Gourd ID Chart

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Once the scales were determined, using Paint Shop Pro, a separate graphical canvas was generated for each individual gourd, and each one was drawn using a mouse since I don't own a digital art pad, each one was carefully depicted to scale, then shaded to give the appearance of shape.  Once each gourd was drawn and painted, the full scale pages were created and layer by layer each one was placed on the paper.  Many different layouts were tried to see what would have the best eye appeal, uniformity, and to make sure the page did not look top heavy.

The process in all took approximately 6 months as it was a digital art learning experience and required many hours of research and layout preparation in order to give the completed project its final look.  The Gourd Reserves charts have been displayed in gourd magazines, including Through the Gourdvine and The Gourd, a publication of the AGS.  When the chart was finished, we did print a few out and sold them at festivals and online, but when our photo printer died we ceased to sell them.  This chart is now available for free to website owners and local and national societies for the purpose of educating people in this fine hobby, and to help to establish a standardized naming system.  Many of the gourds shown on this ID chart have several names, we selected the most universally known name for each of the gourds.

Dan Dunkin