Description:

• Monoecious or dioecious herbs, shrubs or undershrubs, prostrate or scandent, usually variably hairy, rarely spiny, mostly with coiled tendrils, sometimes with tuberous or woody rootstock
• Leaves alternate, usually palmately veined, often palmately lobed, variable, rarely undeveloped; stipules 0 but stipule-like structures sometimes present
• Flowers usually unisexual, usually regular, sometimes paniculate, often solitary, usually white or yellow
• Male flowers: calyx and corolla united below to form a tubular receptacle; calyx lobes 5, usually free; corolla lobes usually 5, free or united at the base, often small and inconspicuous, but in some genera rather large but rarely showy; stamens (1 or 2)3(4 or 5), sometimes with a staminode; filaments free or joined, usually shorter than anthers; anthers free or cohering, 1- or 2-thecous, sometimes varying in one flower; thecae straight, curved, or variously bent; connective sometimes appendaged; pistil rudimentary or absent
• Female flowers: calyx and corolla as in male flower, occasionally different in size; staminodes present or absent; ovary inferior, more rarely free at apex, usually 3-locular, sometimes 1- or 2- or spuriously 4-6-locular, with intruded parietal placentas, with many, rarely 1 or 2, ovules in each locule; style terminal, simple or divided, sometimes surrounded at base by disc-like structure; stigma various, usually of fleshy lobes
• Fruit often a berry, fleshy or corky, usually indehiscent, many-seeded
• Seeds often flattened, smooth or pitted, sometimes hairy; cotyledons conforming to shape of seed, thick or flattened; radicle usually short, conical; endosperm very scanty or 0

Nomenclature:

• Cucurbitaceae
  • Meeuse: 1 (1962)
  • Jeffrey: 1 (1967)
  • Jeffrey: 414 (1978)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 120; species ± 735, cosmopolitan in mostly tropical and subtropical countries
• Southern Africa: Genera 18, species 76. Several species cultivated, many of economic importance

References:

• JEFFREY, C. 1967. Flora of tropical East Africa. Cucurbitaceae
• JEFFREY, C. 1978. Cucurbitaceae. Flora zambesiaca 4
• MEEUSE, A.D.J. 1962. The Cucurbitaceae of southern Africa. Bothalia 8

Resources:

• Key to Cucurbitaceae genera

• Cucurbitaceae genera: