Common Name | Calabash |
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Botanical Name | Crescentia cujete |
Tree up to 10 m tall and 30 cm d.b.h., the branches usually crooked, the crown open; branchlets mostly lacking, smaller branches thick, subterete, with alternate short-shoot projections each bearing a fascicle of leaves from its center. Leaves of various sizes within each fascicle, simple, obovate, the tip obtuse to acute, the base attenuate, petiole lacking, 3.4-26 cm long and 1.0-7.6 cm wide, chartaceous to rigid-chartaceous, secondary veins 5-14 on a side, the midvein raised above; lepidote above and beneath, otherwise glabrous above, beneath pubescent along midvein with simple and forked trichomes, plate-shaped glands at the base of blade beneath, drying grayish-olive.
Inflorescence one or 2 cauliflorous flowers borne on larger branches or trunk, the pedicels lepidote, 1.5 cm long. Flowers with a musty odor, calyx bilabiately split to the base, each lobe 1.8-2.6 cm long and 1.3-2.4 cm wide, mostly glabrous with plate-shaped glands on the upper half of lobes, slightly lepidote at the base; corolla off-white to yellowish-white with purplish venation on the lobes and purplish lines on the tube out- side, tubular with a transverse fold midway across the lower side of the throat, fleshy, 4.1-7.4 cm long and 3.1-4.5 cm wide at the mouth of the tube, the tube 2.8-4.5 cm long, the lobes triangular with the apex extended as a narrow point, 2.5-3.1 cm long, sparsely lepidote or stalked-lepidote on the tube outside and near the mouth of tube inside, more densely so at the level of stamen insertion, papillate-glandular on the lobes outside and sparsely so inside; stamens sub exserted, the anther thecae thick, partially divergent, 5-8 mm long and 2.5-3.5 mm wide, the anterior filaments 2.8-3.2 cm long and inserted 6-11 mm from the base of the tube, the posterior filaments 2.8&-3.3 cm long, inserted 7-15 mm from the base of the tube, the staminode 1-3 mm long, inserted 5-11 mm from the base of the tube; pistil 4.0-4.9 cm long, the ovary rounded conical, 5-7 mm long and 4-7 mm wide, 3-6 mm thick, lepidote, the ovules multi-seriate on 4 placentae; disc annular-pulvinate, 3-4 mm long and 8-11 mm wide.
Fruit a pepo or calabash, spherical to ovoid-elliptic, 13-20 cm in diameter to 30 cm long, the thin hard shell smooth, lepidote-punctate; seeds small, thin, wingless, 7-8 mm long and 4-6 mm wide, scattered through the pulp of the fruit.