CUCUMIS COLOCYNTHIS— BITTER CUCUMBER. 
Class XXL MONCECIA.— Order IX. SYNGENESIA. 
Natural Order, CUCURBITACE.E. THE GOURD TRIBE. 
Fig. ( a ,) front and baek of an anther; Fig. (6,) a seed. 
This plant, which belongs to the same genus with the rich melon for the dessert, and the cucumber well 
known for its cooling qualities, is a native of the Cape of Good Hope, Nubia, and Turkey ; flowering from 
May till August. It appears to have been cultivated in this country in the days of Turner. 
It is a trailing plant, bearing a considerable resemblance in its herbage to the cucumber. The root is 
annual, whitish, branching, and strikes deep into the ground. The stems are slender, angular, branched, 
and rough with short hairs. The leaves are on long petioles, of a triangular form, deeply and obtusely 
sinuated, of a bright green on the upper surface, paler and clothed with short hairs underneath. The flowers 
are solitary, axillary, and of a yellow colour. The calyx of the male flower is bell shaped ; the corolla mo- 
nopetalous, bell-shaped, and divided at the margin, like the calyx, into five pointed segments ; the filaments 
are three, two of which are bifid at the apex ; they are all very short and inserted into the calyx ; the 
anthers are linear, erect, and adhere together on the outer side. The female flower is like the male, but the 
filaments have no anthers ; the germen is inferior, large, with a very short cylindrical style, and furnished 
with three stigmas, which are thick, gibbous, and bent outwardly. The fruit is a round berry or pepo, the 
colour of an orange, and smooth on the outside when ripe ; trilocular, each cell containing numerous ovate, 
acute, compressed seeds, enveloped by a white spongy pulp. — The seeds are perfectly bland and highly 
nutritious, and we learn from Captain Lyon, that they constitute an important article of food in Northern 
Africa. 
Burckhardt when travelling through Nubia found the ground covered with the plant, and states that it 
is very common in every part of the desert ; and if we recollect right, it is mentioned more than once as 
being met with by Major Denham in his adventurous travels in Africa. 
Thunberg tells us, that at the Cape of Good Hope the gourd is eaten, being rendered innocuous when 
properly pickled. This cucumber, which is common in the Levant, is supposed by many persons to be the 
one mentioned in the second Book of Kings, where the sacred historian says, that during a time of dearth in 
Gilgal, “ one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and, gathered thereof wild 
gourds, his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of pottage : for they knew them not. So they 
poured out for the men to eat : and it came to pass, as they were eating of the pottage, that they cried out, 
and said [to Elisha,] Oh thou man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat thereof,” until 
the prophet had miraculously rendered the pottage wholesome. 
The fruit is gathered in autumn, when it begins to turn yellow, and is then peeled and dried in a stove 
or in the sun. 
Qualities and Chemical Properties. — The medullary substance of the fruit of colocynth is the 
part used in medicine. It is white, soft, and porous. The seeds which are imbedded in it are nearly inert. 
To the taste it is intensely bitter. Boiled in water it gives out a large portion of mucilage, so as to form a 
liquor of a gelatinous consistence. This is less active than colocynth itself. Alcohol also dissolves only 
part of its active matter. Experiments seem to prove that colocynth pulp consists chiefly of mucus, resin, 
the bitter principle, and some gallic acid. According to M. Vauquelin, an alcoholic tincture of colocynth 
yields by evaporation a brittle substance, of a yellow colour, partially soluble in water, the residue consisting 
of a white filamentous mass, changing to yellow. He terms it Colocyntine, and considers the active principle 
of the pulp to reside in it. 
