Echinocystis

Torrey & A. Gray

Fl. N. Amer. 1: 542. 1840.

Common names: Wild or wild mock cucumber wild balsam apple
Endemic
Etymology: Greek echinos, hedgehog, and kystis, bladder, alluding to prickly, hollow fruits
Treatment appears in FNA Volume 6. Treatment on page 18. Mentioned on page 6, 22.

Plants annual, monoecious, climbing or trailing; stems glabrate; taprooted with branching secondary roots or roots slender-fibrous; tendrils 3-branched. Leaves: blade depressed-orbiculate to suborbiculate or ovate, palmately (3–)5(–7)-lobed, lobes triangular to oblong-triangular, margins entire or serrulate-cuspidate, surfaces eglandular, glabrous or scabrous. Inflorescences: staminate flowers 50–200 in axillary racemes or racemoid panicles; pistillate flowers 1(–3) from same axils as staminate, peduncles erect at apex; bracts absent. Flowers: hypanthium shallowly cupulate; sepals (5–)6, filiform, almost pricklelike; petals (5–)6, connate 1/4 length, white to greenish white, narrowly triangular to linear-lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, 3–6 mm, minutely glandular-puberulent, corolla rotate. Staminate flowers: stamens 3; filaments inserted at corolla base, connate, column 0.4 mm; thecae connate, forming subsessile capitate androecium but not fused into single ring, sigmoid-flexuous, connective broad; pistillodes absent. Pistillate flowers: ovary 2-locular, subglobose; ovules 2 per locule; style 1, nearly vestigial; stigma 3, forming a subglobose head; staminodes absent. Fruits pepos, light green to blue-green, globose-ovoid to ovoid or ellipsoid, bladdery-inflated, symmetric, dry, thin-walled, surface moderately to densely echinate, spinules weak, flexible, whitish-glaucous with green mottling at bases, dehiscence apically irregularly lacerate, sometimes explosively. Seeds 4, broadly oblong-ellipsoid, strongly flattened, not arillate, margins not differentiated, surface slightly pitted-roughened. x = 32.

Distribution

North America.

Discussion

Species 1.

Selected References

None.