Cucurbitaceae Page

Diversity: A family about 90 genera and over 700 species of scandent, tendril-bearing herbs, both annual and (mostly) perennial. Domesticated elements include the watermelon (Citrullus) and bottle groud (Lagenaria), both from Africa, squash (Cucurbita - 5 species domesticated) from the Americas, and Cucumis species from Eurasia (cucumber and sweet melons).

Distribution: Broadly distributed throughout tropical areas of the World - pantropical - 12 genera and 25 species in the Texas flora.

Significant features: A given local flora will include a small number of herbaceous vines and, of these, a smaller number that produce tendrils. Combine these features with a palmate pattern of leaf lobing and venation and you have, just using vegetative characters, a well marked family. The floral structure is also distinctive in that the Cucurbitaceae combines imperfect or unisexual, a mode typical of anemophilious taxa, with clear floral adaptations for insect pollination, i.e., large, showy, complex flowers that are highly specialized via connation at all four whorls (synsepalous, sympetalous, synantherous, and syncarpous) and adnation to produce an hypanthium and conspicuous epigyny. The fruit is - in essence - a berry with a leathery or lignified (hardened) pericarp+hypanthium that is tagged with a family-level name, the pepo. The family includes the flowering plants species that has, perhaps, the longest association with humans - the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) and the species that produces the largest fruit of all angiosperms (Cucurbita maxima).

Citrullus colocynthis - wild watermelon - overview

Cucumber (Cucumis sativa) flowers at anthesis, pistillate (left) and staminate (right)

Bottle Grourd (Lagenaria siceraria) staminate flower (left) with perianth removed showing synanthery and 'contorted' anthers and (right) pistillate flower in bud

Fruit cross sections - apparent parietal (from the pericarp) placentation - acorn squash (Cucurbita pepo) and cucumber (Cucumis sativa)