Description:

• Monoecious or dioecious, annual or perennial, scandent or prostrate herbs
• Leaves petiolate, palmately lobed, with lobes apiculate and with 2 glands at apex of petiole
• Tendrils bifid, rarely simple
• Male flowers in racemes: calyx 5-lobed, tube subcampanulate, lobes subulate, each with 2 or 3 subglobose swellings at base; corolla 5-lobed, lobes elliptic or oblong, densely papillose on inner face, papillose on outer, villous at base within, veined and with 3 prominent ribs on outer face; stamens 3, filaments oblong-linear, free, 1 anther 1-thecous, others 2-thecous, thecae much folded, connective broad and flat; pistil 0
• Female flowers solitary: calyx and corolla as in male; staminodes 3, small; ovary ellipsoid, with 3 placentas and many ovules, style cylindric, stigma globose, shortly 3-lobed, fleshy
• Fruit the size of a large orange, many-seeded, with leathery pericarp
• Seeds elliptic in outline, with tough, smooth testa; cotyledons elliptic; radicle subacute
• x = 11 (13 - 1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Lagenaria Ser.
  • Seringe: 25, t.2 (1825)
  • Meeuse: 82 (1962)
  • Jeffrey: 437 (1978)
• Adenopus Benth.
  • Bentham: 372 (1849).
• Sphaerosicyos Hook.f.
  • Hooker: 824 (1867)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 6, mostly tropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 2, all regions, except Namibia, Free State, Lesotho and Northern Cape