A pumpkin patch in British Columbia, Canada

© James Chen/Shutterstoc

Halloween ready?. Ready for carving

Who doesn’t love a pumpkin patch? This one is in the Canadian province of British Columbia, which grows some of the world’s largest pumpkins. You might think the orange gourds in today's photo are vegetables, but botanists say they are actually the fruit of pumpkin vines. That’s because pumpkins contain seeds and grow from the same part of the plant that produces flowers. And now, as Halloween nears, pumpkins are ripe for picking - and carving into spooky faces.

The jack-o'-lantern tradition dates back to the mid-1800s in Ireland, when people carved faces into potatoes or turnips to ward off evil spirits. Irish immigrants took the tradition to North America, only to discover that the native pumpkins were much easier to carve. Fast-forward more than a century and everyone is rather grateful that pumpkins are the seasonal 'fruit' of choice. Who wants a turnip-flavoured spiced-latte?