Okeechobee gourd Okeechobee gourd

Plants annual; roots fibrous. Stems prostrate or climbing, sometimes rooting adventitiously at nodes, to 12 m, usually coarsely hirsute to villous with flattened, vitreous hairs to glabrate or glabrous, rarely sparsely short-hispid, without pustulate-based hairs; tendrils 3-branched 1–3 cm above base, glabrous, eglandular. Leaves: petiole 5–15 cm, sparsely hispid to pilose-hirsute or glabrous or glabrate; blade orbiculate to suborbiculate or reniform, shallowly to deeply 5–7-lobed, 4.5–15 × 8–20 cm, usually broader than long or equally so, base cordate, lobes triangular to acuminate-triangular or subrhombic, midveins of leaf lobes not distinctly elongate-whitened, margins closely mucronulate to denticulate, sometimes irregularly toothed, surfaces hispid to hispid-hirsute or villous-hirsute to sparsely hirsute-villous or glabrate, sometimes mottled with silvery-green adaxially, eglandular. Peduncles in fruit shallowly 5-ribbed, abruptly expanded at point of fruit attachment, hardened, woody. Flowers: hypanthium campanulate, 5–6 mm; sepals lanceolate to subulate, 5–8 mm; corolla cream to pale creamy yellow, campanulate, 6–9 cm (staminate shorter); anther filaments glabrous; ovary densely pubescent. Pepos light green with pale white stripes at maturity, green-streaked or flecked with white or dark green, tan to brown when dry, globose to broadly ovoid, (5–)7–9(–11) cm, surface smooth; <flesh intensely bitter>. Seeds whitish to light gray, ovate, 7–12 mm, margins thickened-raised, surfaces smooth. 2n = 40.

Flowering Mar–Nov. Pond-apple swamps, floodplain forests, power-line cuts through cypress-hardwood swamps, hardwood swamp edges, spoil islands, climbing on pond apple, elderberry, and buttonbush, often associated with alligator nests, canal and ditch banks, wet road shoulders; of conservation concern; 0–20 m; Fla.