Description:

• Monoecious or dioecious, annual or perennial herbs
• Leaves circular or triangular-ovate, cordate, or deeply 3-5-lobed, with lobes lobulate or cut
• Tendrils 2-4-fid, rarely undivided or straight and spinescent or none
• Male flowers solitary, rarely fascicled: calyx 5-lobed; tube saucer-shaped or campanulate; corolla 5-lobed, lobes elliptic, oblong, or ovate-oblong, glandular-hairy or setose outside; stamens 3(4), one anther 1-thecous and others 2-thecous, thecae bent, connective flat and broad, inserted at base of calyx tube; pistil 0 or represented by a small gland
• Female flowers solitary, rarely fascicled: calyx and corolla as in male; staminodes 3, tongue-shaped or represented by setae; ovary ovoid, pubescent, with 3 placentas and many ovules, style short, columnar, stigmas 3, thick, kidney-shaped, somewhat bilobed
• Fruit globose or ellipsoid, fleshy or dry, indehiscent, many-seeded; pericarp smooth or tubercled
• Seeds obovate, somewhat compressed, with woody testa; cotyledons oblong to obovate, radicle subacute
• x = 11 (12)

Nomenclature:

• Citrullus Eckl. & Zeyh.
  • Ecklon & Zeyher: 279 (1836) name conserved
  • Meeuse: 54 (1962)
  • Launert & Roessler: 6 (1968)
• Colocynthis Mill.
  • Miller: 1 (1754) name rejected

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 4, Africa to Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 3, all regions, rare in KwaZulu-Natal, Western and Eastern Cape