The 10,000 Year History of the Birdhouse Gourd

Birdhouses from Birdhouse Gourds only available in shop while they last.

photo by Emily Rozema

​The 10,000 Year History of the Birdhouse Gourd

The birdhouse gourd may look like a squash plant growing in the garden, but it is actually part of a very old relationship between people, plants and birds.

Its botanical name is Lagenaria siceraria. You may also know it as a bottle gourd, calabash or hard shelled gourd.
​
And people have been growing and using them for thousands of years.

One of Our Oldest Useful Plants

Unlike pumpkins and squash that were mainly grown for food, bottle gourds were valuable because of how they dried.

The outer shell becomes remarkably hard and lightweight. Once the inside is cleaned out, the gourd becomes a natural container.

Long before plastic bottles, metal buckets or even pottery were common, people could grow their own containers.

Bottle gourds have been made into bowls, cups, bottles, dippers, storage containers, fishing floats, musical instruments and eventually birdhouses.

Archaeological evidence shows just how old this relationship is.

Researchers studying a rock shelter in Honduras found bottle gourd remains dating back roughly 11,000 years. The gourds appear to have been used as watertight containers and possibly for cooking and drinking.
​
That makes the bottle gourd one of the oldest plants humans intentionally used and cultivated for something other than simply eating it.

A Plant That Travelled the World

The bottle gourd originated in Africa, but somehow managed to spread through tropical areas around the world thousands of years ago.

Part of the reason may be its incredible ability to float.

Experiments have found that dried gourds can spend months floating in salt water and still contain viable seeds. Genetic research published in 2014 found that ancient American bottle gourds were closely related to African gourds and suggested their ancestors may have floated naturally across the Atlantic before people began cultivating them in the Americas.

A gourd falls into the water in Africa, floats across an ocean and eventually helps establish a plant population on another continent.
​
Researchers are still piecing together exactly how bottle gourds travelled around the world, but we know people were using them in the Americas thousands of years before European contact.

So When Did a Gourd Become a Birdhouse?

That is where the Purple Martin enters the story.

Purple Martins are cavity nesting birds. They do not carve out their own nesting holes. Instead, they look for an existing cavity where they can build their nest.

Long before Europeans arrived in North America, Indigenous peoples were hanging hollowed gourds that Purple Martins began using as nesting sites. Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon both document this early tradition of providing gourds for the birds.

There were practical reasons for wanting the birds nearby.

Purple Martins eat flying insects, and their loud alarm calls could also alert people when animals approached. Some historical accounts suggest gourds were intentionally placed around settlements and food storage areas because of this relationship.

In eastern North America today, Purple Martins nest almost entirely in human provided housing, including wooden martin houses and artificial or natural gourds. In western parts of their range, they are still more likely to use natural cavities.

The Tradition Continued

European settlers continued the practice of putting up homes for Purple Martins, and martin houses became a familiar sight around farms, inns and country homes.

By 1831, naturalist John James Audubon wrote about seeing martin boxes at country taverns. He even joked that the nicer the martin house was, the better the tavern was likely to be.
​
Over time elaborate wooden martin houses became popular, but the simple dried gourd never disappeared.

From Garden to Birdhouse

The birdhouse gourds we grow today are the same species that humans have found useful for thousands of years.

They grow on enormous vines and produce a green fruit with a rounded bottom and narrower neck. Once mature, the gourd is allowed to dry until its shell becomes hard. This takes the entire winter season. 

A hole can then be cut into the side, the dried material and seeds removed, and the shell turned into a completely natural birdhouse.

There is something pretty amazing about growing a plant in your garden knowing that people were growing variations of the very same plant thousands of years ago.
​
We value the relationship between humans and birds that we get to continue today.

photo of finished Birdhouse Gourd with Turnip the cat and Tomato the cat at Mingle Hill Farm & Apothecary Shop ~ photo by Emily Rozema