The Cucurbitaceae ( ),[ Cucurbitaceae Juss. Plants of the World Online. Retrieved 10 June 2024.] Some commonly cultivated cucurbits include:
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Cucurbita – squash, pumpkin, zucchini (courgette), some .
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Lagenaria – calabash (bottle gourd) and other, ornamental gourds.
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Citrullus – watermelon ( C. lanatus, C. colocynthis), plus several other species.
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Cucumis – cucumber ( C. sativus); various and vines.
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Momordica – bitter melon.
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Luffa – commonly called 'luffa' or ‘luffa squash'; sometimes spelled loofah. Young fruits may be cooked; when fully ripened, they become fibrous and unpalatable, thus becoming the source of the loofah scrubbing sponge.
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Cyclanthera – Caigua.
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Chayote – Chayote
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Gerrardanthus — the species G. macrorhizus has gained some popularity as an ornamental Caudex plant.
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Xerosicyos — the silver dollar vine ( Xerosicyos danguyi) is popular amongst horticulturists and plant collectors.
The plants in this family are grown around the tropics and in temperate areas of the world, where those with edible fruits were among the earliest cultivated plants in both the Old and New Worlds. The family Cucurbitaceae ranks among the highest of plant families for number and percentage of species used as human food.
Description
Most of the plants in this family are
Annual plant , but some are woody
, thorny shrubs, or trees (
Dendrosicyos). Many species have large, yellow or white flowers. The stems are hairy and pentangular.
are present at 90° to the leaf petioles at nodes. Leaves are
exstipulate, alternate, simple
Leaf shape lobed or palmately compound. The flowers are
unisexual, with male and female flowers on different plants (
Dioecy) or on the same plant (
Monoecy). The female flowers have inferior ovaries. The fruit is often a kind of modified berry called a pepo.
Fossil history
One of the oldest
fossil cucurbits so far is †
Cucurbitaciphyllum lobatum from the
Paleocene epoch, found at Shirley Canal,
Montana. It was described for the first time in 1924 by the paleobotanist Frank Hall Knowlton. The fossil leaf is palmate, trilobed with rounded lobal sinuses and an entire or
serrate margin. It has a
leaf pattern similar to the members of the genera
Kedrostis,
Melothria and
Zehneria.
[Revisions to Roland Brown's North American Paleocene Flora by Steven R. Manchester at Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA. Published in Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae, Series B – Historia Naturalis, vol. 70, 2014, no. 3-4, pp. 153–210.]
Classification
Tribal classification
A 2011 classification of Cucurbitaceae delineated 15 tribes:
Systematics
Modern molecular phylogenetics suggest the following relationships:
Pests and diseases
Sweet potato whitefly is the vector of a number of
that cause yellowing symptoms throughout the southern United States.
Further reading
External links
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Cucurbitaceae in T.C. Andres (1995 onwards).
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Cucurbitaceae in L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz (1992 onwards). The families of flowering plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, information retrieval.
