Coccinia

Plants perennial, dioecious, climbing or trailing; stems annual, glabrous or glabrate [flocculent-arachnoid]; roots tuberous; tendrils unbranched [2-branched]. Leaves: blade broadly ovate to rounded-cordate, subreniform, or deltate, unlobed or palmately 5-angular or -lobed, lobes deltate or triangular to broadly angular-elliptic, margins denticulate, adaxial surface with circular, sessile scales [hirsute to hirsutulous], often with glands on both sides of midrib near petiole. Inflorescences: staminate flowers solitary, [clustered, racemose, or in spikes], axillary; pistillate flowers solitary, axillary [racemose]; bracts absent. Flowers: hypanthium campanulate to turbinate; sepals 5, linear to subulate; petals 5, connate 1/2 length, bright white, often slightly green-veined [brownish yellow or orange], ovate to ovate-triangular, [8–]15–20[–62] mm, hirtellous or puberulent-hirtellous to glabrate, corolla campanulate. Staminate flowers: stamens 3; filaments inserted near hypanthium base, connate; thecae connate into central column and forming central oblong body, sigmoid-triplicate, connective broadened; pistillodes absent. Pistillate flowers: ovary 3-locular, ovoid to fusiform; ovules ca. 15–40 per locule; style 1, narrowly columnar; stigma 1, 3-lobed; staminodes 3. Fruits pepos, usually green with white streaks or lines, sometimes red to scarlet at maturity, broadly cylindric to ellipsoid-cylindric, smooth, glabrous, indehiscent, flesh whitish to greenish. Seeds 30–50[–120], asymmetrically pyriform [ovoid or broadly ellipsoid], compressed, arillate, margins thickened or not bordered, surface fibrillose. x = 12.

Distribution

s, se Asia (India, Malaysia), Africa, introduced also in Pacific Islands.

Discussion

Species ca. 30 (1 in the flora).

Selected References

None.

Lower Taxa

Coccinia grandis