Description:

• Monoecious, rarely dioecious, annual or perennial herbs, hispid or scabrid, often with woody rootstock
• Leaves toothed to variably lobed or dissected, sometimes cordate at base
• Tendrils simple
• Male flowers fascicled, rarely solitary: calyx 5-lobed, tube campanulate or turbinate, lobes subulate or long-linear, sometimes setose or 3-lobed; corolla 5-partite, lobes oblong, ovate or obovate-oblong; stamens 3, filaments free, linear-oblong, short, anthers free or cohering, with one anther 1-thecous and others 2-thecous, thecae bent, rarely straight, connective produced at apex into an appendage; pistil rudimentary
• Female flowers usually solitary, rarely fasciculate: calyx and corolla as in male; staminodes often 3; ovary globose, ovoid, or subcylindric, often tubercled or variously hairy, with 3-5 placentas and many ovules, styles short, surrounded at base by cup-like structure, stigmas 3-5(6)
• Fruit various, fleshy, often indehiscent, many-seeded; pericarp smooth or tubercled, glabrous or hairy
• Seeds suborbicular, or ovate-oblong or obovate; radicle obtuse or subacute
• x = 12 (7) (high polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Cucumis L.
  • Linnaeus: 1011 (1753)
  • Meeuse: 59 (1962)
  • Kirkbride: 1 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 32, mainly Africa, also Asia, Australia; a few widely cultivated
• Southern Africa: Species 14, all regions, rare in Western Cape