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Citrullus colocynthis
Also called Bitter Cucumber, Bitter Apple, Vine Of Sodom, Wild Gourd, Paddymelon
Colocynth is a desert vining plant from the gourd family, closely resembling a watermelon vine but producing small, hard, very bitter fruits. It thrives in hot, dry, sandy ground and needs very little water once established.
Citrullus colocynthis, with many common names including colocynth, coloquintida, bitter apple, bitter cucumber, vine of Sodom, or wild gourd, is a poisonous desert viny plant native to the Mediterranean Basin and West Asia, especially the Levant, Turkey (especially in regions such as İzmir), and Nubia.
It resembles a common watermelon vine but bears small, hard fruits with a bitter pulp. The plant contains cytotoxic cucurbitacins and is thus unsafe to use as an herbal medicine. It originally bore the scientific name Colocynthis citrullus.
C. colocynthis, a perennial plant, can propagate both by generative and vegetative means. However, seed germination is poor due to the extreme xeric conditions, so vegetative propagation is more common and successful in nature. In the Indian arid zone, growth takes place between January and October, but the most favorable period for the vegetative growth is during summer, which coincides with the rainy season. Growth declines as soon as the rains and the temperature decrease and almost stops during the cold and dry months of December and January. Colocynth prefers sandy soils and is an example of water management that may be useful in research on how desert plants react to water stress. To enhance production, an organic fertilizer can be applied.
Colocynth is also commonly cultivated together with cassava (intercropping) in Nigeria.
Citrullus colocynthis is a desert viney plant that grows in sandy, arid soils. It is native to the Mediterranean Basin and Asia, and is distributed among the west coast of northern Africa, eastward through the Sahara, Egypt until India, and reaches also the north coast of the Mediterranean and the Caspian Seas. It grows also in Southern Europe and on the Aegean Islands. On the island of Cyprus, it is cultivated on a small scale; it has been an income source since the 14th century and is still exported today.
C. colocynthis can be eaten or processed as energy source, e.g. oilseed and biofuel.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Citrullus colocynthis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
