130 
CU CURB ITACEjE . 
Fruit a small soft globose berry 1. Bryonopsis. 
Fruit large, fleshy, gourd-like. 
Petals free ; male flowers in racemes. 
Petals fringed * Trichosanthes. 
Petals not fringed * Luffa. 
Petals connate ; flowers direct from leaf axils. 
Male flowers fascicled * Cucumis. 
Males and females both solitary. 
Petals connate low down * Citrullus. 
Petals connate high up * Cucurbita. 
1. BBYONOPSIS, Arn. 
Flowers monoicous. Male flower with a campanulate calyx-tube, 5 
minute linear teeth, 3 short filaments arising from the base of the 
calyx, one of the anthers 1-celled, the other two 2-celled, with flexuose 
cells and a broad round connective. Female flower with an ovoid 
ovary, surrounded by 5 staminodes, numerous ovules and a slender 
trifid style. Petals 5, lanceolate, arising from the top of the calyx - 
tube. Fruit a naked globose berry the size of a small crab-apple. 
Distrib. Spread through the tropics of the Old World; the only 
species. 
1. B. laciniosa, Arn. in Hook. Journ. iii. 274. A climbing herb 
with a perennial root and slender stems much twisted spirally and 
forked tendrils. Leaves very thin, slightly pilose beneath, round- 
cordate, 3-6 in. broad, with 5-7 deep or shallow palmate lobes. 
Flowers fascicled at the nodes, one female and two or three males in a 
cluster on short pedicels. Corolla yellowish, i in. deep. Fruit an 
inch thick, green striped with yellow. Bryonia laciniosa, Linn. ; Wt. 
Icon. t. 500. B. dioica, Bojer , Rort. Maur. 148, non Linn. 
Mauritius, in woods on tbe banks of the stream at Moka. Seychelles, climbing 
to the top of trees in woods near the Cascade in Mahe, Horne , 460 / Calebasse 
mar r on. 
In Mauritius, several of the commonly-cultivated gourds are casually subspon- 
taneous, of which the following are the principal, viz., 
* Trichosanthes anguina , Linn. ; DC. Prod. iii. 314 ; Bot. Mag. t. 472. 
A native of Tropical Asia. Annual, leaves round-cordate deeply 3-5- 
lobed, tendrils trifid, petals small white fringed free spreading, male 
flowers in stalked corymbs from the axils of the leaves, female flowers 
solitary from the same axils, fruit hispid spindle-shaped nearly a 
foot long, with a long beak. Patole. 
# Luffa acutangula , Seringe ; DC. Prod. iii. 302 (Cucumis, Linn . ; 
Luffa foetida, Cav. ; DC. Prod. loc. cit. ; Bot. Mag. t. 1638), a native of 
Tropical Asia. Stems slender glabrous, tendrils simple or forked, 
leaves round-cordate with 5 deltoid lobes, petals large free obovate 
spreading yellow, male flowers in long or short racemes from the 
axils of the leaves, female flowers solitary, fruit clavate a foot long 
2-3 inches thick with ten sharp angles dry dehiscing by a terminal lid. 
Papangaye. Pipengaye. 
