Cucurbitaceae is a plantfamily commonly known as gourds or cucurbits and includes crops like cucumbers, squashes (including pumpkins), luffas, melons and watermelons. The family is predominantly distributed around the tropics, where those with edible fruits were amongst the earliest cultivated plants in both the Old and New Worlds.
Most of the plants in this family are annualvines but there are also woody lianas, thorny shrubs, and trees (Dendrosicyos). Many species have large, yellow or white flowers. The stems are hairy and pentangular. tendrils are present at 90° to the leaf petioles at nodes. Leaves are exstipulate alternate simple palmately lobed or palmately compound.The flowers are unisexual, with male and female flowers usually on different plants (dioecious), or less common on the same plant (monoecious). The female flowers have inferior ovaries. The fruit is often a kind of berry called a pepo.
Classification
There are about 125 extant genera in Cucurbitaceae, including 825 species. The following is the classification as given by Charles Jeffrey as of 1990.
^ Renner, S. S., Schaefer, H. & Kocyan, A. (2007). "Phylogenetics of Cucumis (Cucurbitaceae): Cucumber (C. sativus) belongs in an Asian/Australian clade far from melon (C. melo)". BMC Evolutionary Biology7: 58-69. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-7-58.
David Bates, Richard Robinson, Charles Jeffrey, eds. (1990). Biology and Utilization of the Cucurbitaceae. Cornell UP. ISBN 0-8014-1670-1.
Jeffrey, C. 2005. A new system of Cucurbitaceae. Bot. Zhurn 90: 332–335. [latest classification of Cucurbitaceae]
