158 GOURD FAMILY. 



■>- Leaves pdnuUely lobed : flower widely spreading. 



P. gracilis. Slender herb, witli roumlish and slightly 3-lobed otherwise 

 entire leaves, and whitish merely 5-cleft flower only 1' in diameter, destitute of 

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

 tendrils. ® 



P. e'serulea, the Common or Blue Passiox-flower ; 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. ^dulis, Granadilla ; 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. 



t- ^- Leaves entire, feather-veined : flower bell-shaped. 



P. quadrangul^riS, IfAROs 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. CUCUEBITACE^, GOURD FAMILY. 



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

 age, watery juice, alternate palmately ribbed and mostly lobed 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 : — 



MOMOKDICA ELATiiRIUM or ECBALIUM AGRESTE, 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 (.ouch, and discharges the 

 contents \vi:h violence (whence the name Ecbalium). 



TUICHOSANTHES COLUBUINA, SnAKE-CcCUMBER Or VeGK- 



TABLE Serpent, a tall climber with the staininate flowers orna- 

 mental, the lobes of the while 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. 



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



with tony and narrom cells, bent up and. down or contorted: ovules and steels 



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



called a pepo) large, fleshy or pulpy with a harder rind. 



« * Both kinds of flowers solitary in the axils. 



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



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



petals ; the sterde on n long, the fertile on a shorter peduDcle. Anthers lightly 



cohering with each other. Stigmas 8, each 2-lobed. Fruit with a hiird or 



Tt°h "" """^ ^°''' "*'''■ ^^®'** margined. Petiole bearing a pair of glands 



