The Cucurbitaceae (/kjuːˌkɜːrbɪˈteɪsiːˌiː/),[2] also called cucurbits or the gourd family, are a plant
family consisting of about 965 species in around 95
genera.[3] Those most important to humans are the following:[citation needed]
Luffa – the common name is also luffa, sometimes spelled loofah (when fully ripened, two species of this fibrous
fruit are the source of the loofah scrubbing sponge)
The plants in this family are grown around the tropics and in temperate areas, 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.[4] The name Cucurbitaceae comes to
international scientific vocabulary from
Neo-Latin, from Cucurbita, the
type genus, + -aceae,[5] a standardized
suffix for plant family names in modern taxonomy. The genus name comes from the
Classical Latin word cucurbita, meaning "gourd".
Description
Most of the plants in this family are
annualvines, but some are woody
lianas, 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 leaf
petioles at nodes. Leaves are
exstipulate, alternate, simple
palmately lobed or palmately compound. The flowers are
unisexual, with male and female flowers on different plants (
dioecious) or on the same plant (
monoecious). The female flowers have
inferior ovaries. The fruit is often a kind of modified
berry called a
pepo.[6]: 2
^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.