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Crossing Watermelons
Building A Better Moon and
Stars:
Moon and Stars Watermelon is one of those Seed Savers Exchange success
stories. There are quite a few of them. Varieties that were
in commerce decades ago and then lost. When it seemed that all
that was left of a variety were the folks who remembered it existing at
one time. Desperately seeking Moon and Stars, a melon last listed
in seed catalogs in the 1930's and thought extinct, members of the Seed
Savers Exchange searched almost from the beginning of that
organization. In 1980 Merle Van Doren, a melon farmer near Macon,
Missouri contacted Kent Whealy, director of SSE to tell him that he was
still raising the melon. Van Doren said that it had been brought
from Tennessee. The roundish, medium sized, dark green fruits are
sometimes slightly ribbed with the signature small yellow “stars” that
dot the surface and often a much larger yellow "moon".
Although, I was told by a commercial melon breeder in the 1980's that
the "moon and stars" trait was caused by a virus that infects the seed,
it is actually caused by a gene, the "Sp" gene, which is the
source of the yellow spotting. The "Sp" gene is dominant and when
the pollen "flies" in a melon patch with Moon and Stars, other melons
nearby who receive the pollen will inherit the trait and pass it on to
the following generation. There really isn't much of a need to
get up close and pollinate the small watermelon flowers if you want to
breed the trait into a new population. One only has to grow
the first generation hybrids and look for the moon and stars
trait. It shows up early and often the seed leaves (cotyledons)
will have a yellow dot or two; the true leaves that follow are even
more prominantly marked. There are many variations of Moon and
Stars. I've been lamenting the loss of a varient of Moon and
Stars from the late 1980's. A melon collector named Curtis
Slyvester Showell sent me seed of "Japanese Moon and Stars". It
was a beautiful little dark green round ice box melon. Unlike
Moon and Stars, the flesh was fine-grained and deep red insrtead
of coarse and pink. It was also a long keeper that held up well
instead of becoming mealy.
Moon and Stars has some flaws, who doesn't; but it is a very
sweet and attractive melon that is indeed a national treasure.
Why mess with Moon and Stars? It's a compulsion of mine.
Lets try for a better Moon and Stars. Many years ago I grew Moon
and Stars the same year I grew really nice hybrid called You Sweet
Thing, which was a delightfully sweet melon, an early ripening
beauty. Having nothing else to cross, this was a match of
necessity. Oddly, one of the main factors that control a breeding
project happens to be what you have growing in the field at the same
time. It's only in recent years that I will actually give some
thought to the parents I need to grow for a particular cross before I
plant (most of the time). The progeny of "You Sweet Thing x
Moon and Stars" were all early small melons with stripes and light
green rind like You Sweet Thing and the yellow stars of Moon and
Stars. Unfortunately, not as dramatic or as beautiful as the
originals. I'e learned that it is important to grow dark colored
melons where the "Sp" genetics will show up more readily.
This year I grew more than a half dozen kinds of acclaimed dark green
early round "icebox" type melons; any one of which would be nice to
pass the moon and star trait to along with the Van Doren Moon and
Stars. I wasn't concerned that they differed in flesh color
(red, pink or yellow flesh) but I did want to use only small seeded
kinds since one of Moon and Stars characteristics (not a good one in my
opinion) are the many large seeds it produces. Of all the
resulting melons of this mass cross, we have already made some initial
selection based on flesh quality. It happened late summer as we
were saving the melon seed and conducting the mandatory taste testing
that goes along with the job. The next step is when we plant the
seed and screen the seedlings for the moon and star trait. Yes,
our project distributes the seed to breeders if you too would like to
work on this kind of project.
