Lagenaria vulgaris.

Lagenaria vulgaris Ser. Cucurbitaceae. Bottle Gourd. Trumpet Gourd.

Tropics. This plant has been found growing wild with bitter fruit in India, in the moist forests around Deyra Doon. It is also found wild in Malabar, where it is cultivated in gardens for the gourd which is eaten. This gourd is one of the commonest of the native vegetables of India, says Firminger, the fruit being of moderate size and having the appearance of two oval gourds united endwise, or, of an inflated bladder compressed by a cord around it. Cut up in slices, it affords a palatable but rather insipid dish. About Constantinople, it is called dolma and is cultivated, the gourd when young, being cut and boiled with other foods. In Europe, the variety called trompette is eaten. In China, its soft, downy herbage is sometimes eaten, and the fruit is also eaten but is apt to purge.

Sturtevant's Edible Plants of the World, 1919, was edited by U. P. Hedrick.