In scientific terms, the squashes are all in the genus Cucurbita. This category means that all species in this genus share common traits, like the notorious vining habit, orange/yellow star shaped flowers; they also differ in certain traits based on the species and subspecies chosen, like fruit size and color, length of storage time, and plant size. Zucchini, yellow/summer squash, typical pumpkins are all Cucurbita pepo, which are mostly squashes you grow to eat young or not store long. Cucurbita maxima has many hard winter squashes. A combo of winter and summer squashes is Cucurbita moschata. When I talk about the plants as a general group, I call them "squashes" or "cucurbits" (as interchangeable terms), and then I refer to the specific species/subspecies by their names "zucchini" or "pumpkin" or "acorn squash", you get the idea. Most of these genus are native to Central America and are an awesome example of natural selection and speciation. I attached a link to the Wikipedia page where you can read more about Cucurbita! Here is a link that might be useful: Cucurbita

yellow squash or zucchini

Thanks, jaynine, and yes, that is one sad little plant. It's had something chomping on the leaves, and I keep hoping it will grow faster than the chompers can chomp. This is an aquaponic system, so I don't want to introduce anything to kill the chompers that will affect the fish. Thanks for your plant id's- guess il just have to wait and see what's yellow and what's green.

Thank you for the reply ken-adrian. I hadn't thought about aphids. Years past have had aphids on some ornamentals shrubs and yes, ants were with them. Yet I hadn't noticed any in my new veggie garden, and when I saw the ants, failed to remember the past association! So I went out and did indeed "look long and hard" for aphids. Fortunately, I see none! Yes, sure on the ID on the ants. And when I said "no harm", I ment, I don't SEE any harm. I'm new at veggie gardening, so am not confident that I know for sure what to look for. I also see some very tiny fly type critters on my zuchinni leaves and blossoms. Maybe a gnat type thing. Not a great lot of them. No idea what they are. Again, I see no visible damage, but ----I'm new at this!