Acanthosicyos horridus

Acanthosicyos horridus

Order	[[]]
Family	[[]]
Genus	Acanthosicyos

2n =

Origin : area of origin

wild or cultivated

Uses summary

Description

• 1, habit of fruiting plant; 2, male flower; 3, female flower; 4, seeds. Redrawn and adapted by Iskak Syamsudin
  1, habit of fruiting plant; 2, male flower; 3, female flower; 4, seeds. Redrawn and adapted by Iskak Syamsudin
• fruit
  fruit
• male flower, spines and stem
  male flower, spines and stem
• developing fruits on female plant
  developing fruits on female plant
• male flower
  male flower
• nara field
  nara field

Uses

NARAS. Tropics of Africa. The fruit grows on a bush from four to five feet high, without leaves and with opposite thorns. It has a coriaceous rind, rough with prickles, is about 15-18 inches around and inside resembles a melon as to seed and pulp. When ripe it has a luscious sub-acid taste. The bushes grow on little knolls of sand. It is described, however, by Anderson as a creeper which produces a kind of prickly gourd about the size of a Swede turnip and of delicious flavor. It constitutes for several months of the year the chief food of the natives, and the seeds are dried and preserved for winter consumption.

Sturtevant, Notes on edible plants, 1919.

Links

• BHL
• FAO Ecocrop
• Feedipedia
• GRIN
• IPNI
• Mansfeld
• Moerman, Native American Ethnobotany
• Multilingual Plant Name Database
• NewCrop Purdue
• Plant List
• Plants for a future
• PROTA on Pl@ntUse
• Tela Botanica
• Useful Tropical Plants Database
• Wikipédia
• Wikiphyto