Melothria

Plant Characteristics

Cultivation

Scientific Names

Melothria >

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Read about Melothria in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture

Melothria (probably a name for a bryony-like plant; melon is Greek for apple, which may refer to the shape of the fruit). Cucurbitaceae. Slender herbaceous vines, climbing or trailing, annual or perennial, with small yellow or white flowers and sometimes attractive little fruits, found in warmer parts of the world. Plants with simple tendrils at the axils and very small monoecious, dioecious or polygamous fls., the sterile usually in corymbs or racemes, the fertile solitary and often slender-stalked: lvs. entire, lobed or divided: fls. white or yellow; sepals 5; corolla 5-lobed, campanulate; stamens in sterile fls. 3 or 5, more or less connate by the anthers, in the fertile fls. reduced to rudiments: fr. a small pulpy pendulous berry, with usually many flat horizontal seeds.—Species perhaps 70, widely distributed, a few of them native from Pa. and Fla. to Texas. Four kinds appear to be in the trade, M. scabra, M. japonica, M. maderaspatana and M. punctata, the last being perhaps the best. These are slender but rapid growing half-hardy annual climbers, which may be grown indoors in winter, but preferably outdoors in summer for covering unsightly objects. They are attractive in fruit. Cogniaux (in DC. Mon. Phan., Vol. 3, 1881) makes three sections of the genus. M. scabra, M. pendula, and M. japonica, belong to the first, M. punctata to the second, and M. maderaspatana to the third. M. punctata has sensitive tendrils. Section I. Eumelothria. Fls. usually monoecious, males mostly racemose and females solitary; anthers subseasile: fr. mostly with long and slender peduncles; seeds usually not margined and smooth. Section II. Solena. Fls. mostly dioecious, males corymbose; anthers borne on rather long filaments, the connective not produced: fr. mostly short-peduncled; seeds mostly margined and smooth. Section III. Mukia. Fls. monoecious, males clustered and females solitary; anthers subsessile, the connective apiculate: fr. subsessile; seeds margined, usually pitted. M. fluminensis, Gardn., produces a fr. said to be pickled when green, in Porto Rico, and eaten, and also good when fully ripe: a climber 5 or 6 ft. long: lvs. cordate-ovate, usually acute or short- acuminate, 5-angted or lightly 3-5-lobed, scabrous above: fr. small, not variegated or otherwise marked and in this differing from M. scabra. Trop. Amer: variable. The above text is from the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture. It may be out of date, but still contains valuable and interesting information which can be incorporated into the remainder of the article. Click on "Collapse" in the header to hide this text.

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References

• Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by L. H. Bailey, MacMillan Co., 1963

External links

• w:Melothria. Some of the material on this page may be from Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons license.
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