Plant · P-213

Snake Gourd

Trichosanthes cucumerina

Snake gourd is a tropical climbing vine grown for its young fruit, eaten cooked like green beans, with the mature fruit stretching up to two meters long and four inches thick, its red pulp used the way tomato pulp is used. It needs short days and steady warmth above 25 C at the same time, a combination that only lines up for about ten weeks in late summer into autumn in most warm-temperate climates, well outside the spring planting window most vine crops get. Seed has to be bought as a named cultivar, or specifically as the cultivated variety - the wild form of the species is bitter and unpalatable. Its leaves and shoots are also eaten cooked, but beyond food it offers little else: no notable medicinal use, no fibre, oil or craft yield, and no evidence either way on its value as animal forage.