CUCURBITACEAE  , a botanical

order of dicotyledons, containing 87 genera and about 65o species, found in the temperate and warmer parts of the earth but especially developed in the tropics . The plants are generally annual herbs, climbing by means of tendrils and having a rapid growth . The long-stalked leaves are arranged alternately, and are generally palmately lobed and veined . The flowers or inflorescences are borne in the leaf-axils, in which a vegetative bud is also found, and at the side of the leaf-stalk is a simple or branched tendril . ' There has been much difference of opinion as to what member or members the tendril represents; the one which seems most in accordance with facts regards the tendril as a shoot, the lower portion representing the stem, the upper twining portion a leaf . The flowers are unisexual, and strikingly epigynous, the perianth and stamens being attached to a bell-shaped prolongation of the receptacle above the ovary . The five narrow pointed sepals are followed by five petals which are generally united to form a more or less bell-shaped corolla . There are five stamens in the male flowers; the anthers open towards the outside, are 1, Male flower of cucumber 4, Female flower . (Cucumis) . 5, Horizontal plan of male flower . 2, Same, in vertical section, 6, Transverse section of fruit. slightly enlarged . 3, Stamens, after removal of calyx and corolla .

one-celled, with the

pollen-sacs generally curved and variously united . The carpels, normally three in number, form an ovary with three thick, fleshy, bifid placentas bearing a large number of ovules on each side, and generally filling the interior of the ovary with a juicy mass . The short thick style has generally three branches each bearing a fleshy, usually forked stigma . The fruit is a fleshy many-seeded berry with a tough rind (known as a pepo), and often attains considerable size . The embryo completely fills the seed . The order is represented in Britain by bryony (Bryonia dioica), (fig . I) a hedge-climber, perennial by means of large fleshy tubers which send up each year a number of slender angular stems . The leaves are heart-shaped with wavy margined lobes . The flowers are greenish, i to } in. in diameter; the fruit, a red several-seeded berry, is about in. in diameter . Many genera are of economic importance; Cucumis (fig . 2) affords cucumber (q.v.) and melon (q.v.); Cucurbita, pumpkin and marrow; Citrullus vulgaris is water-melon, and C . Colocynthis, colocynth; Ecballium Elaterium (squirting cucumber) is medicinal; Sechium edule (chocho), a tropical American species, is largely cultivated for its edible fruit; it contains one large seed which germinates in situ .

Lagenaria is the

gourd (q.v.) . The fruits of Lu$a aegyptiaca have a number of closely netted vascular bundles in the pericarp, forming a kind of loose felt which supplies the well-known loofah or bath-sponge .