Luffa – commonly called 'luffa' or ‘luffa squash'; sometimes spelled loofah. Young fruits may be cooked; when fully ripened, they become fibrous and unpalatable, thus becoming the source of the loofah scrubbing sponge.
Xerosicyos — the silver dollar vine (Xerosicyos danguyi) is popular amongst horticulturists and plant collectors.
The plants in this family are grown around the tropics and in temperate areas of the world, where those with edible fruits were among the earliest cultivated plants in both the Old and New Worlds. The family Cucurbitaceae ranks among the highest of plant families for number and percentage of species used as human food.[5] The nameCucurbitaceae comes tointernational scientific vocabulary fromNeo-Latin, fromCucurbita, thetype genus, +-aceae,[6] a standardizedsuffix for plant family names in modern taxonomy. The genus name comes from theClassical Latin wordcucurbita, meaning "gourd".
Most of the plants in this family areannualvines, but some are woodylianas, thorny shrubs, or trees (Dendrosicyos). Many species have large, yellow or white flowers. The stems are hairy and pentangular.Tendrils are present at 90° to the leafpetioles at nodes. Leaves areexstipulate, alternate, simplepalmately lobed or palmately compound. The flowers areunisexual, with male and female flowers on different plants (dioecious) or on the same plant (monoecious). The female flowers haveinferior ovaries. The fruit is often a kind of modifiedberry called apepo.[7]: 2
Pumpkins andsquashes displayed in a show competitionA selection of cucurbits of theSouth Korean Genebank inSuwonCucurbits on display at theReal Jardín Botánico de Madrid, with the title "Variedades de calabaza" include gourds and edible species ofCucurbita andLagenaria.
The most recent classification of Cucurbitaceae delineates 15tribes:[9][10]
^Revisions to Roland Brown's North American Paleocene Flora by Steven R. Manchester at Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA. Published in Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae, Series B – Historia Naturalis, vol. 70, 2014, no. 3-4, pp. 153–210.
^abSchaefer H, Renner SS (2011). "Phylogenetic relationships in the order Cucurbitales and a new classification of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae)".Taxon.60 (1):122–138.doi:10.1002/tax.601011.JSTOR41059827.
^Renner SS, Schaefer H (2016). "Phylogeny and evolution of the Cucurbitaceae". In Grumet R, Katzir N, Garcia-Mas J (eds.).Genetics and Genomics of Cucurbitaceae. Plant Genetics and Genomics: Crops and Models. Vol. 20. New York, NY: Springer International Publishing. pp. 1–11.doi:10.1007/7397_2016_14.ISBN978-3-319-49330-5.
Cucurbitaceae in L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz (1992 onwards). The families of flowering plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, information retrieval.
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