Gourd

Gourd, a name given to various plants of the order Cucurbitaceee and especially to the genus Cueurbita and to the fruit rather than to the rest of the plant. They are trailing annuals with palmately-lobed leaves, unbranched tendrils, and large yellow monoecious flowers, which hybridise so freely as to render it well nigh impossible to discriminate the parent specific forms of the long cultivated races. The fruit is inferior, and has a horny exterior when ripe. They are abundant in tropical and temperate Asia; but some may be indigenous in America. Cueurbita maxima, the yellow or red gourd, will grow in the south of England, and sometimes bears a fruit weighing over two cwt. C. Pepo is the pumpkin, which is largely cultivated, especially in the United States, as food both for man and beast. C. ovifera. the vegetable marrow, the form most grown in England, is apparently a variety of the pumpkin. C. Mclopepo, the squash, with fruits of various subangular forms, is also largely cultivated in America. The elongated and well-named snake-gourds of India and China belong to a separate genus, Trieltosanthes, as do also the bottle-gourds, Lagenaria, hollowed out in the East, when ripe, into bottles, basins, or spoons. All gourds have a tendency to secrete the powerfully purgative principle coincynthin, especially in the ripe rind and seeds. [Colocynth.]