Honey… I shrunk the Cucumbers!
28 Nov
Last Saturday, when I was making my way home from World Farm to Khatib MRT station, my friend who was with me chanced upon an interesting vine that was growing on the chain-linked fence surrounding the compound of Peiying Primary School. I reckoned this vine had been growing there for some time and I had not been paying attention to it all this while, partly because it looked somewhat weedy.
Little green fruits hanging from every leaf axil along the vine.
The vine had angular, heart-shaped leaves and borne numerous, small, green fruits that hung from every leaf axil along the length of the vine. At the first glance from afar and via the look of its leaves, I thought it was the noxious vine, Mikania micrantha. But I provened wrong because the leaves of Mikania micrantha are much longer in length and the flowers produced by the vine was not white but yellow.
The leaves of the vine are cordate in shape.
After a close-look at its flowers, my friend told me that he was quite sure that the vine is a cucurbit, a member of the melon family. The flowers produced by the plant are very small, five-petalled and yellow in colour. Typical of a monoceious cucurbit, this vine produces male and female flowers on the same plant. The male flowers were borne on a spray while those of the female appeared singly and each had an obvious ovary behind their petals.
Male flowers are borne in a cluster.
I was quite surprised by this discovery as it was something new to me. I have never seen it growing anywhere else before. The other cucurbit vine that I know grows like a weed in Singapore is the ivy gourd, Coccinia grandis. The ivy gourd’s flowers look like stars and are white in colour. Fruits are oval in shape and they turn red when ripe. They are larger in size when compared to the ones produced on this cucurbit vine.
The female flower is produced singly and had a baby fruit located behind the yellow petals.
I wanted to learn more about this plant and before I could really do that, I need to find out what is its botanical name. My initial search for information inside printed publications that I had did not yield anything useful and I went on to dig for some more in the World Wide Web. After much effort and leads, I managed to find some pictures via Google that revealed plants that look very similar to the one I saw. Luckily and thankfully, I chanced upon the web version of a publication entitled ”Guide to Tendrillate Climbers of Costa Rican Mountains” that was written by Alexander Krings and Richard R. Braham. It had a comprehensive description of morphological characteristics of some plants that I found tremendously useful.
After much reading, I reasoned the likely identity of this cucurbit vine to be Melothria pendula. It is commonly known as the creeping cucumber or Guadeloupe cucumber. It has a close relative, M. scabra but the two can be told apart via the smaller fruits produced by M. pedula that measure up to 1.5 cm long and 1 cm in diameter and are uniformly green. Melothria scabra fruits are larger up to 4 cm long and 2.5 cm wide and are frequently striped which look like mini-watermelons.
A closer look at the fruits.
When ripe, the fruits are said to turn black externally and small, white seeds similar to those seen in cucumbers can be seen being lodged within an insipid, cooling pulp. The fruits are edible when they are ripe and pickled when they are still green. There is unverified information on the World Wide Web stating the fruits are strong laxatives!
This cucurbit is native to the West Indies, Southern United States to Argentina and seeds can be bought from some online seed sources. I am now wondering whether this vine was deliberately planted by someone who had the seeds or is it a plant that has long naturalised in Singapore.
Tags: Melothria, Melothria pendula
Wilson Wong
I teach nearby (Yishun JC)… and I didn’t notice this!?
Fascinating post!
Isn’t that the fence towards the neighbourhood end of Bah Soon Pah Rd ?
The Melothria genus is not mentioned in Hsuan Keng’s definitive ‘Concise Flora of Singapore’ (1990). So Melothria pendula is probably a relatively recent arrival. I won’t be surprised if the plant you saw is actually an escapee from one of the nearby farms.
As for the Asian region, there are academic papers dating back to 2001 describing how Melothria pendula was newly-naturalized in Taiwan during that time.
Have you seen this ?
http://www.natureloveyou.sg/Melothria%20pendula/Main.html
This guy spotted some Melothria pendula in Singapore on 20 Sep 08. Hmm … same fence ?
Hi Joyce,
Thanks for the note. It is located on the ‘wilder’ side of Singapore, very much neglected, forgotten and pretty overgrown as well. Because there are so many other vines around, one can easily omit this one!
Wilson
Hi Pat,
Nice to see you comment again. It was Keneric who spotted this vine amongst the wilderness. I am impressed with the sharpness of his eyes.
You are also resourceful as well. I haven’t come across the webpage you have given in your comment after all the search I have performed!
I cannot tell whether it is the same fence though from the pictures posted on the webpage.
I managed to fish out the paper in Taiwania that reported Melothria pendula as a newly naturalised plant on the island:
http://tai2.ntu.edu.tw/udth/bin/taiwania.exe/dl?id=289
Interesting note about escape from the farms nearby but why would anyone import this plant, for food uses? But it seems possible that this plant could have come as seeds or vines growing on plants being imported.
Wilson
Hello Wilson,
This plant is not a commercial crop, so I don’t think it was imported for food purposes, although online reports seem to indicate that the unripe green fruits are fairly tasty. There is one anecdote that describes the ripened fruits as foul-tasting. (See: http://maturehealth.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/caution-rancid-fruit/ )
It is indeed possible that Melothria pendula arrived here as a “stowaway” on imported plants. If it was brought in deliberately, could it be that it has some medicinal value (besides the reported laxative action of the fruits) ? Or was it taken into the country out of sheer collector’s curiosity ?
Guess what … just now I suddenly remembered that I had seen this plant before. That was in 2004 or 2005, along Jalan Anak Bukit (the stretch alongside Rifle Range Rd). One does not need sharp eyes to spot this though, because it was clambering all over the orange netting & roadworks plastic barricades placed on the grass verge beside the footpath. The mini “striped watermelons” and foliage made such a striking constrast against the orange background that I stopped for a closer look. I took some photos with my pocket camera as well, but they weren’t any good, since it was nearly 8pm & the only source of light was from the street lamps. Hmmm … the plant’s descendants could still be somewhere around the area.
(PS: Incidentally, I mentioned to Keneric recently that he has very good eyesight. Gary’s eyes are very sharp as well … once there was a group of us standing near the HortPark VC counter, when he suddenly announced, “That butterfly is very nice.” And we were like “Huh, where ???” It turned out that he was referring to a butterfly amongst the plants all the way across the Water Garden ! (Needless to say, none of us could see it.)
Hi Pat,
Nice comment you have given.
Just yesterday, I was walking along the stretch of nurseries along Thomson Road and I saw the another vine of the same plant growing on one of the fences surrounding the grounds of Candy Floriculture!
I think no one at present would have an answer for us as to how the Melothria pendula made its way to Singapore and become naturalised in this island state. I think even if someone had bought the seeds from overseas to grow, he or she could have done so due to novelty reasons.
I don’t think anyone would want to grow the vine, harvest its fruits and eat it for its laxative effects? Haha…
hi Wilson,
i chance upon your blog while looking for seeds and seedlings to plant in Singapore. I will be visiting Singapore this summer, and would like to help my mom start an edible garden. She lives in Serangoon. do you have any leads as to where and how I can get started? I understand that the soil in her garden is rather clayey.
Hope you can help. You sound like a diehard greenthumb!
Thanks.
Shu