Description
The bottle gourd, Lagenaria siceraria (synonym Lagenaria vulgaris Ser.), also known as opo squash, or long melon, is a vine grown for its fruit, which can either be harvested young and used as a vegetable, or harvested mature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil, or pipe. The fresh fruit has a light green smooth skin and a white flesh. Rounder varieties are called calabash gourds. They come in a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle shaped, or slim and serpentine, more than a metre long. Gourds are often called “calabashes”, but this is incorrect; calabashes (Crescentia cujete) are the fruit of the tree, while gourds (Lagenaria) grow on vines. See Sally Price, “When is a calabash not a calabash”
The gourd was one of the first cultivated plants in the world, grown not primarily for food, but for use as a water container. The bottle gourd may have been carried from Africa to Asia, Europe and the Americas in the course of human migration, or by seeds floating across the oceans inside the gourd. It has been proved to be in the New World prior to the arrival of Columbus.
Packet includes approximately 10-15 seeds.
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