158 GOURD FAMILY. 



*- Leaves palmate! y lobed : flower widely spreading. 



P. gracilis. Slender herb, with roundish and slightly 3-lohed otherwise 

 entire leaves, and whitish merely 5-clet't flower only 1' in diameter, destitute of 

 true petals. Recently introduced, remarkable for the quick movement of its 

 tendrils. 



P. CSertllea, the COMMON or BLUE PASSIOX-FLOWKR ; with leaves very 

 deeply cleft or parted into 5 or 7 lance-oblong entire divisions, pale ; and flower 

 almost white, except the purple centre and blue crown banded with whitish in 

 the middle. 



P. 6dulis, GRAN ADI LLA ; the purplish edible fruit as large as a goose-egg : 

 leaves dark green and glossy, deeply cleft into 3 ovate pointed lobes beset with 

 callous teeth ; bracts under the flower also toothed ; the crown crisped, 2' across, 

 whitish with a blue or violet base, as long as the white petals. 



- Leaves entire, feather-veined : flower Itell-shaped. 



P. quadrangulariS, LARGE GRANADILLA. Very large, with the branches 

 4-sided and the angles wing-margined; leaves 4' -8' long, ovate or oval, or 

 slightly heart-shaped, bright green, with 2-4 pairs of glands on the petiole; 

 flower about 3' long, fragrant, crimson-purple and the violet or blue crown 

 variegated with white. Fruit rarely formed here, edible, 6' long. 



52. CUCURBITACE^I, GOURD FAMILY. 



Mostly tendril-bearing herbs, with succulent but not fleshy herb- 

 age, watery juice, alternate palmately ribbed and mostly lohed or 

 angled leaves, monoecious or sometimes dioecious flowers ; the calyx 

 coherent with the ovary, corolla more commonly monopetalous, 

 and stamens usually 3, of which one has a 1-celled, the others 

 2-celled anthers ; but the anthers are commonly tortuous and often 

 all combined in a head, and the filaments sometimes all united in 

 a tube or column. Fruit usually fleshy. Embryo large, filling the 

 seed, straight, mostly with flat or leaf-like cotyledons. Besides 

 those here described, there are occasionally cultivated for curiosity 

 the following annuals : 



MOMORDICA ELATERIUM or ECBALIUM AGRE'STE, the SQUIRT- 

 ING CUCUMBER, a homely hairy herb without tendrils, and pro- 

 ducing an oblong hairy pulpy fruit (of violently purgative qualities), 

 which when ripe bursts suddenly at the touch, and discharges the 

 contents with violence (whence the name Ecbalium). 



TRICHOSANTHES COLUBRINA, SNAKE-CUCUMBER or VEGE- 

 TABLE SERPENT, a tall climber with the staminate flowers orna- 

 mental, the lobes of the white corolla being cut into a lace-like 

 fringe of long and very delicate capillary lobes (whence the name 

 of the genus), and the fruit very like a snake, 3 or 4 feet long, 

 green and striped, turning red when ripe. 



1. Flowers large or middle-sized, on separate simple peduncles in the axils: anthers 

 with limy and narrow cells, bent up and down or contorted: ovules and seeds 

 many, horizontal, on mostly 3 simple or double placenta: fruit (of the sort 

 called a pepo) large^fltsliy or pulpy with a harder rind. 

 * Both kinds of flowers solitary in the axils. 



1. LAGENARIA. Tendrils 2-forked. Flowers musk-scented, with a funnel-form 

 or bell-shaped calyx-tube, and 5 obcordate or obovate and mucronate white 

 petals ; the sterile on a long, the fertile on a shorter peduncle. Anthers lightly 

 cohering with each other. Stigmas 3, each 2-lobed. Fruit with a hard or 

 woody rind and soft flesh. Seeds margin 3d. Petiole bearing a pair of glands 

 at the apex. 



