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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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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.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 8–11
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Vine- Soil pH
- 6–8
- Plant type
- Vine
- Mature height
- 9–10 ft
- Mature spread
- Not yet recorded
- Plant spacing
- 24–36 in
- Root type
- Tap
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
Similar plants
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Air Potato
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Akebia
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Arctic Kiwi
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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