In 2014 this theory was repudiated based on a more thorough genetic study. Researchers more completely examined the plastid genomes of a broad sample of bottle gourds, and concluded that North and South American specimens were most closely related to wild African variants and could have drifted over the ocean several or many times, as long as 10,000 years ago.
The plant produces night blooming white flowers. The male flowers have long peduncles and the females have short ones with an ovary in the shape of the fruit. Sometimes the female flowers drop off without growing into a gourd due to the failure of pollination if there is no night pollinator (probably a kind of moth) in the garden. Hand pollination can be used to solve the problem. Pollens are around 60 microns in length.
First crop is ready for harvest within two months; first flowers open in about 45 days from sowing. Each plant can yield 1 fruit per day for the next 45 days if enough nutrients are available.
The plant is not normally toxic when eaten. The excessively bitter (and toxic) gourds are due to improper storage (temperature swings or high temperature) and over-ripening.
Vietnam
In Vietnam, it is a very popular vegetable, commonly cooked in soup with shrimp, meatballs, clams, various fish like freshwater catfish or snakehead fish or crab. It is also commonly stir-fried with meat or seafood, or incorporated as an ingredient of a
hotpot. It is also used as a medicine. Americans have called calabashes from Vietnam "opo squash".
The shoots, , and leaf of the plant may also be eaten as leaf vegetable.
South Asia
India
A popular north Indian dish is
lauki chana, (
Chickpea and diced gourd in a semi-dry gravy). In the state of
Maharashtra in India, a similar preparation called
dudhi chana is popular. The skin of the vegetable is used in making a dry spicy
chutney preparation. It is consumed in
Assam with fish curry, as boiled vegetable
curry and also fried with potato and tomatoes.
Lauki kheer (grated bottle gourd, sugar and milk preparation) is a dessert from
Telangana, usually prepared for festive occasions. In Andhra Pradesh it is called
sorakaya and is used to make
sorakaya pulusu (with tamarind juice),
sorakaya palakura (curry with milk and spices) and
sorakaya pappu (with
).
Lau chingri, a dish prepared with bottle gourd and
prawn, is popular in
West Bengal.
The edible leaves and young stems of the plant are widely used in
Bengali cuisine. Although popularly called
lauki in Hindi in northern part of the country, it is also called
kaddu in certain parts of country like eastern India. (However, "kaddu" popularly translates to "pumpkin" in northern India.) It can be consumed as a dish with rice or
roti for its medicinal benefits. In Gujarat, a traditional Gujarati savoury cake called
handvo is made primarily using bottle gourd (in Gujarati,
dudhi), sesame seeds, flour, and often lentils. In Karnataka, bottle gourd is called
Sorekayi and is used to prepare
palya (stir-fry) and
Sambaru (a south Indian stew). Also, crispy
sorekayi dosé (dosa) is one of the popular breakfasts in Karnataka.
Bangladesh
In Bangladesh the fruit is served with rice as a common dish. It is called "Lau" in this country.
Nepal
In Nepal, in the
Madhesh Province southern plains, preparations other than as a normal vegetable include
halva and
khichdi.
Pakistan
In Pakistan, the calabash is cultivated on a large scale as its fruit are a popular vegetable.
Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka, it is used in combination with rice to make a variety of milk rice, which is a popular dish in Sri Lanka. Different types of curries are also made using this, especially white curries with coconut milk.
Europe
Italy
In Southern Italy and Sicily, the variety Lagenaria siceraria var. longissima, called zucca da vino, zucca bottiglia, or cucuzza, is grown and used in soup or along with pasta.
In Sicily, mostly in the Palermo area, a traditional soup called "Minestra di Tenerumi" is made with the tender leaves of var. Longissima along with peeled tomato and garlic. The young leaves are themselves called "tenerumi", and Lagenaria in Sicily is cultivated both professionally and in home orchards mostly to use the leaves as a vegetable, the fruit being treated almost as a secondary product.
It is also grown by the Italian diaspora.
Cultural uses
Africa
Hollowed-out and dried calabashes are a very typical utensil in households across West Africa. They are used to clean rice, carry water, and as food containers. Smaller sizes are used as bowls to drink
palm wine. Calabashes are used in making the West African instruments like the
Shekere, a Yoruba instrument similar to a maraca,
kora (a
harp-lute),
xalam/
ngoni (a lute) and the
goje (a traditional fiddle). They also serve as resonators underneath the
balafon (West African
marimba). The calabash is also used in making the
shegureh (a Sierra Leonean women's rattle)
[ image at Joseph Opala , "Origin of the Gullah", yale.edu.] and
balangi (a Sierra Leonean type of
balafon) musical instruments. Sometimes large calabashes are simply hollowed, dried and used as percussion instruments by striking them, especially by
Fula people,
Songhai people,
Gur languages-speaking and
Hausa people peoples. In
Nigeria the calabash has been used by some motorcyclists as an imitation helmet in an attempt to circumvent motorcycle helmet laws.
In
South Africa it is commonly used as a drinking vessel and a vessel for carrying food by communities, such as the
Bapedi and
Zulus. Erbore children of Ethiopia wear hats made from the calabash to protect them from the sun. South Africa's
FNB Stadium, which hosted the 2010 FIFA World Cup, is known as The Calabash as its shape takes inspiration from the calabash. The calabash is also used in the manufacture of
puppets.
Calabash also has a large cultural significance. In many African legends, Calabash (commonly referred to as gourds) are presented as a vessel for knowledge and wisdom.
) are used to collect and store
palm wine in Bandundu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo (c. 1990)]]
China
The
húlu (/), as the calabash is called in
Standard Chinese , is an ancient symbol for health. Hulu had fabled healing properties due to doctors in former times carrying medicine inside it. The
hulu was believed to absorb negative, earth-based
qi (energy) that would otherwise affect health, and is a traditional Chinese medicine cure. The bottle gourd is a symbol of the
Eight Immortals, and particularly
Li Tieguai, who is associated with medicine. Li Tieguai's gourd was said to carry medicine that could cure any illness and never emptied, which he dispensed to the poor and needy.
Some folk myths say the "gourd had spirals of smoke ascend from it, denoting his power of setting his spirit free from his body,"
and that it "served as a bedroom for the night..."
The gourd is also an attribute of the deity
Shouxing and a symbol of longevity.
Dried calabash were also used as containers for liquids, often liquors or medicines. Calabash gourds were also grown in earthen molds to form different shapes with imprinted floral or arabesque designs. Molded gourds were also dried to house pet crickets. The texture of the gourd lends itself nicely to the sound of the insect, much like a musical instrument. The musical instrument, hulusi, is a kind of flute made from the gourd.
cricket cage]]
'', the calabash gourd flute or bottle gourd flute]]
Jewish culture
In the
Sephardim culture, the gourd is eaten during
Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year's Eve). According to the texts the gourd is eaten as a symbol of tearing apart the enemies who may come and attack. It is called Qaraa, which in Hebrew means "torn" קרע.
"שיקרעו אויבנו מעלינו" meaning "may our enemies be torn apart over from us".
Polynesia
The plant is spread throughout
Polynesia known by
hue in many related languages.
In Hawaii the word "calabash" refers to a large serving bowl, usually made from hardwood rather than from the calabash gourd, which is used on a buffet table or in the middle of the dining table. The use of the calabash in Hawaii has led to terms like "calabash family" or "calabash cousins", indicating an extended family grown up around shared meals and close friendships. This gourd is often dried when ripe and used as a percussion instrument called an ipu heke (double gourd drum) or just Ipu in contemporary and ancient hula.
The Māori people of New Zealand grew several cultivars of calabash for particular uses like ipu kai cultivars as food containers and tahā wai cultivars as water gourds. They believed the gourd as a representation of Pū-tē-hue, one of Tāne (their god of forests)'s offspring.
India
The calabash is used as a resonator in many string instruments in India. Instruments that look like guitars are made of wood, but can have a calabash resonator at the end of the strings table, called
toomba. The
sitar, the
surbahar, the
tanpura (north of India,
tambura south of India), may have a
toomba. In some cases, the
toomba may not be functional, but if the instrument is large, it is retained because of its balance function, which is the case of the
Saraswati veena. Other instruments like
rudra veena and
vichitra veena have two large calabash resonators at both ends of the strings table. The instrument, Gopichand used by the Baul singers of Bengal is made out of calabash. The practice is also common among
Buddhist and
Jain sages.
These toombas are made of dried calabash gourds, using special cultivars that were originally imported from Africa and Madagascar. They are mostly grown in Bengal and near Miraj, Maharashtra. These gourds are valuable items and they are carefully tended; for example, they are sometimes given injections to stop worms and insects from making holes in them while they are drying.
and one rudra veena (bottom right)]]
is similar but larger and with lower sounds (something like a bass sitar)
, the calabash resonator is not always functional but it is kept in place because of the balancing effect.
played in Indian classical music, it has two calabash gourd resonators. (one string) resonator made from a calabash gourd]]
may have a toomba (although not in this picture), a resonator made of calabash at the end of the strings table.
Hindu ascetics ( sadhu) traditionally use a dried gourd vessel called the kamandalu. The juice of a bottle gourd is considered to have medicinal properties and be very healthy (see juice toxicity above).
In parts of India a dried, unpunctured gourd is used as a float (called surai-kuduvai in Tamil) to help people learn to swim in rural areas.
Philippines
In the Philippines, dried calabash gourds are one common material for making a traditional
salakot hat.
In 2012, Teófilo García of Abra in Luzon, an expert artisan who makes the Ilocano people tamburaw variant using calabash, was awarded by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts with the "Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan" (National Living Treasures Award). He was cited for his dedication to practising and teaching the craft as an intangible cultural heritage of the Philippines under the Traditional Craftsmanship category.
in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Money Museum, with the bottom one made from calabash]]
from the Philippines (c.1900), the top one is made from calabash]]
, the 18th-century Ilocano revolutionary leader, shown wearing a tamburaw made from gourd]]
New Guinea
Among some New Guinea highland tribes, the calabash is used by men as a
Koteka.
South America
In Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and southern Brazil, calabash gourds are dried and carved into
mates (from the
Quechua language word
mathi,
adopted into the Spanish language), the traditional container for mate, the caffeinated, tea-like drink brewed from the
yerba mate plant. In the region the beverage itself is called
mate as well as the calabash from which the drinking vessels are made. In Peru it is used in a popular practice for the making of
mate burilado; "
burilado" is the technique adopted for decorating the
mate calabashes.
In Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador calabash gourds are used for medicinal purposes. The Inca culture applied symbols from folklore to gourds, this practice is still familiar and valued.
North America
Calabash's watertight features allowed it to be often used as a container to ship seeds across the translantic slave trade.
They were also used by enslaved people to carry seeds for planting on plantation fields.
On plantations that held enslaved African Americans, the calabash symbolized freedom—as alluded to in the song "Follow the Drinking Gourd" that referenced the Big Dipper constellation that was used to guide the Underground Railroad.
Other uses
Tobacco smoking pipe
The gourd can be dried and used to smoke pipe
tobacco. According to American consular reports from the early 20th century calabash pipes were commonly used in South Africa. Calabash was said to bestow a "special softness" of flavor that could not be duplicated by other materials. The lining was made of
meerschaum, though
tin was used for low-grade models.
A typical design yielded by this squash is recognized (theatrically) as the pipe of
Sherlock Holmes, but the inventor of this character, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, never mentioned Holmes using a calabash pipe. It was the preferred pipe for stage actors portraying Holmes, because they could balance this pipe better than other styles while delivering their lines.
Enema equipment
The gourd is used traditionally to administer
. Along the upper Congo River an enema apparatus is made by making a hole in one end of the gourd for filling it, and using a resin to attach a hollow cane to the gourd's neck.
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