Yesterday marked the third day of the Singapore Garden Festival (SGF) and it started with me meeting up with Richmond and Lily at Little India. We then visited Tekka Market to hunt for some interesting vegetables for showcasing and educational purposes in the Green Culture Singapore booth at Suntec City Convention Center where the Festival was held.
I found two interesting vegetables on sale in the makeshift Tekka Market. Both were cucurbits and I intuitively knew the first one was a bittergourd relative from the seeds found inside the fruit. They borne their characteristic ‘bite-marks’ on the edge of the rather flattish seeds. The identity of the plant that produced these fruits is probably Momordica dioica rather than Momordica foetida. Young green fruits sold in the market are shown in the picture below.
Another fruit that I bought is most likely to be the pointed gourd (Trichosanthes dioica) and a picture of the immature green fruits of the pointed gourd sold in a number of stalls in the market is shown in the picture below.
After all the grocery shopping had been done at Tekka Market, we made our way back to Suntec Convention Center. At about 2 pm, I hosted Wilson Ng, a radio host from Mandarin radio station, Radio 1003 where I then brought him around the SGF and introduced him to the various exhibits on both the fourth and sixth levels.
After a quick, two hour long tour, we headed for the radio station at the Singapore Press Holdings located at Jalan Toa Payoh. The radio show about the SGF started at about 5 pm and we chatted at length about the various exhibits we saw at the Festival.
Halfway through the show, I found myself succumbing to the fatigue that had been accumulated over the past several days. My thought processes kind of slowed down and my mouth also did not cooperate with my mind and I found it somewhat difficult to convey my thoughts in the spoken form.
I just hope that the radio show went well.
Hi, Reading your article, I got both information which I seek and am going to give information that you seek. The first was Momordica foetida, which I only know locally as Calcutta bitter gourd and whose english name I had long been seeking as its one of my fav vegetables.
And the second vegetable is Pointed gours also known as parval/parwal a very popular and easily available vegetable. Its taste is a little like ivy gourd and both are delicious!!!
It is Trichosanthes dioica for sure.
Thank you so much for the identification!
Note to all readers – I have just updated the identities of the two curcubits to the best of my knowledge at present – Trichosanthes dioica and Momordica dioica.