Plant · P-347

Ivy Gourd

Coccinia grandis

Ivy Gourd is a vigorous climbing vine grown for its green immature fruit, eaten raw in salads or cooked in curries, plus a ripe sweet red fruit and edible young leaves and shoots - though the yield is modest rather than a serious food source. It is dioecious, meaning male and female flowers grow on separate plants, and only a mixed planting sets fruit; a single-sex vine produces none of the bright red, bird-spread seed that has made it a serious pest in some tropical regions. Where winters bring hard freezes, the top growth dies back to the root each year and regrows from the tuber, so it behaves as a die-back perennial rather than an evergreen one.