The Crescentia cujete tree is better known as Calabasas or Kalabás in Kreyol. The tree was growing in the courtyard of the Fort Royal Hotel in Petit Goave in Haiti in 2014. This illustration and the photo I took does not capture how exceptional this tree looks from a distance, with its many 10″ egg-shaped gourds hanging from branches. Columbus and his crew must have been taken aback by this tree. It is otherworldly and one hopes that no one would suffer walking under the tree when one of the gourds dropped from a branch. I learned from the hotel bartender, who while offering me fresh-cut sugar cane (gratis) said, this the fruit is not eaten, but can be cut in half, cleaned out and dried to be used as a bowl for the house. In that moment, I wanted to take one home, but I would have never gotten very far through U.S. Immigration and Customs in Miami with a gourd in my suitcase. I am sure gourds taken in a suitcase happens all the time. We gardeners (farmers and horticulturalists) are pirates. We take and keep for ourselves the things that don’t belong to us (all the time). We should be content to just look and appreciate, but we covet and plan our reproductions, our way and how we practice of our powerful gardening ways.