Alsomitra macrocarpa

Description

Alsomitra macrocarpa (Latin for "grove mitre/fillet" and "large-fruited") or the Javan cucumber is a gourd-bearing liana, belonging to the pumpkin family from the tropical Asian forests of the Malay Archipelago and the Indonesian islands. Alsomitra is a genus of 34 species of vines found in Southeast Asia, Australia and South America. The fruits or pepos are also remarkable in that they are football-sized (about 300mm diameter) and bell-shaped, suspended high in the forest canopy, and densely packed with large numbers of papery winged seeds, falling from the underside of the fruit and gliding long distances when mature. The plant was first described under the name Zanonia macrocarpa in 1825 by Carl Ludwig Blume from fruiting material collected on Mount Parang in Java. In 1843 Max Joseph Roemer published it under the name Alsomitra macrocarpa, including 7 other ill-fitting species in the genus, a genus he did not define. In 1881 Alfred Cogniaux allocated the species to Macrozanonia macrocarpa. The current accepted name is Roemer's Alsomitra macrocarpa.