Plant · P-211

Bitter Melon

Momordica charantia

Bitter melon is a fast-growing tropical vine grown for its young green fruit, cooked the way cucumber is used across the tropics. Left to ripen, the fruit turns orange, splits open, and becomes toxic - which is also how the plant spreads, since birds eat the ripe red seed coating and drop the seed elsewhere. The bitterness is the point of the crop, and the plant also carries a long traditional reputation for managing blood sugar, though the clinical evidence for that is mixed rather than settled. It thrives in real heat but makes poor livestock forage, since most animals decline to eat it, and it should never be fed to a pregnant or breeding female of any species.