Plant · P-346

Achocha

Cyclanthera pedata

Achocha is a fast climbing vine that gives three edible parts off one plant - young fruit eaten raw or cooked with a cucumber flavor, mature fruit stuffed like a pepper, and young shoots and leaves cooked as greens. It grows only as a warm-season annual, killed by the first hard freeze, but needs just about four months of warm weather to set its first fruit, so a normal summer is plenty. The seed and fruit also carry a real medicinal reputation - brewed as a tea, powdered against intestinal parasites, or taken as juice - with one trial recording an 18.3 percent drop in blood cholesterol over a year.