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Published In: A Flora of North America: containing . . . 1(3): 542. 1840. (Fl. N. Amer.) Name publication detailView in BotanicusView in Biodiversity Heritage Library
 

Project Name Data (Last Modified On 8/11/2017)
Acceptance : Accepted
Project Data     (Last Modified On 7/9/2009)
Status: Native

 

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1. Echinocystis lobata (Michx.) Torr. & A. Gray (wild cucumber)

Sicyos lobata Michx.

Micrampelis lobata (Michx.) Greene

Map 1628, Pl. 372 d

Plants monoecious annual vines with slender taproots. Stems to 5 m or more long, slender (1–2 mm in diameter), glabrous, not roughened, the tendrils branched. Leaves mostly long-petiolate, the petiole 1–4 cm long, lacking glands at the tip, glabrous or nearly so. Leaf blades 2–8 cm long, 3–12 cm wide, broadly ovate to nearly circular in outline, palmately moderately 5-lobed, the lobes triangular to oblong-triangular, with sharply pointed tips and mostly narrowly rounded (less than 90°) sinuses, cordate at the base, the margins otherwise sparsely toothed, the surfaces glabrous or slightly to moderately roughened with minute, nonsticky, pustular-based hairs (often only the small, hardened bases apparent). Flowers solitary or in small, few-flowered clusters (pistillate) or in well-developed racemes or racemelike panicles (staminate) 8–14 cm long in the leaf axils, the main stalk of the pistillate inflorescence 2–5 mm long, the clustered flowers with individual stalks 1–5 mm long. Calyx lobes 1.0–1.5 mm long. Corollas 8–12 mm wide, saucer-shaped to broadly bell-shaped, the usually 6 lobes 3–6 mm long, white to cream-colored. Staminate flowers with the filaments fused into a tube (the anthers usually free). Pistillate flowers usually lacking staminodes, the ovary with usually 2 ovules per placenta, the stigma bluntly 2- or 3-lobed. Fruits solitary, thin-walled berries, more or less inflated and juicy at first but becoming dry and fibrous inside a papery wall at maturity, dehiscing irregularly at the tip with age, 2.0–3.5 cm long, ovoid or ellipsoid, with a stalk 9–35 mm long, the surface green, covered with slender (often bristly), relatively soft, straw-colored to pale yellow prickles 3–6 mm long, otherwise glabrous. Seeds usually 4, 12–20 mm long, 6–9 mm wide, elliptic-obovate to more or less elliptic in outline above a short, stalklike base, flattened, usually pointed at the tip, the surface otherwise shallowly and irregularly pitted, dark brown, often finely mottled. 2n=32. June–October.

Scattered mostly in the western half of the Unglaciated Plains Division sporadically south to Jasper and Greene Counties and east to the city of St. Louis (eastern U.S. west to Montana and Texas; Canada; introduced west to Washington and Arizona). Banks of streams and rivers and bottomland forests; rarely roadsides and disturbed areas.

Wild cucumber occasionally is grown as an ornamental on arbors for its showy staminate inflorescences and attractive foliage. It can escape from cultivation. Native Americans used an infusion of the species to treat fevers, rheumatism, headaches, and general pain, and to induce abortion (Moerman, 1998). With age, the large bristly fruits burst irregularly at the tip and the seeds are dispersed explosively under hydrostatic pressure.

 
 


 

 
 
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