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12(1): Medicinal and poisonous plants 1

Trichosanthes cucumerina L.

This article should be read together with the article on the genus: Trichosanthes in the Handbook volume indicated above in this database.

Sp. pl. 2: 1008 (1753).

Trichosanthes anguina L. (1753), Trichosanthes pedatifolia Miq. (1856), Trichosanthes reniformis Miq. (1856).

Snake gourd (En). Patole, serpent végétal (Fr). Indonesia: paria belut (general), petola ular (Malay, Moluccas), pare welut (Javanese). Malaysia: ketola ular, timun bengkok, petola ular (Peninsular). Philippines: melon-daga, pakupis, tabubok (Tagalog). Laos: ngoo ngèèwz. Thailand: buap ngu, nom phichit (central), ma noi (northern). Vietnam: d[aa]y na t[aa]y, d[uw]a n[us]i, m[uw] [ows]p t[aa]y.

From India and Sri Lanka to Indo-China, southern China, Thailand and throughout Malesia towards northern Australia; cultivated in this area and elsewhere.

Fruits of wild plants are used as a purgative and a vermifuge. In Indonesia, the inner pulp of the fruit is made into a syrup to treat cough. Immature fruits of cultivated forms are eaten boiled as a vegetable or in curries. Young shoots and leaves are also edible. The fruits become inedible upon ripening. In West Africa, the red fruit pulp is used as a kind of cheap tomato paste. Fruits of the wild forms are very bitter and inedible.

A monoecious, annual vine up to 6 m long, stem 4-angular, sparsely pubescent or glabrescent; leaves suborbicular or slightly kidney-shaped to broadly ovate, shallowly to deeply 3-7-lobed, 7-10 cm x 6-13 cm (in cultivated forms up to 25 cm across), base cordate, lobes rounded to obtuse, sparsely hirsute to almost glabrous on both sides; corolla about 3 cm in diameter; male flowers in lax, 3-25 cm long racemes, bracts small, up to 2 mm long; female flowers solitary or rarely in pairs; fruit ovoid, 4.5-7.5 cm x 3-4 cm, ripening to yellow or orange (in cultivated forms fruit linear, up to 100 cm long); seeds ovate-truncate, compressed. The cultivated forms are traditionally distinguished as a species (Trichosanthes anguina L.), subspecies (subsp. anguina (L.) Greb.) or variety (var. anguina (L.) Haines), though it seems more appropriate to classify these in a cultivar group (e.g. cv. group Snake Gourd). Wild Trichosanthes cucumerina is found in open forest, forest margins and scrub vegetation, up to 1000(-1500) m altitude.

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M.S.M. Sosef, E. Boer & N. Bunyapraphatsara

Sosef, M.S.M., Boer, E. & Bunyapraphatsara, N., 1999. Trichosanthes cucumerina L.. In: de Padua, L.S., Bunyapraphatsara, N. and Lemmens, R.H.M.J. (Editors): Plant Resources of South-East Asia No 12(1): Medicinal and poisonous plants 1. PROSEA Foundation, Bogor, Indonesia. Database record: prota4u.org/prosea