Echinocystis

Chayote ( Echinocystis lobata )

The chayote or bur cucumber ( Echinocystis lobata ), also lobed chayote, is a native North American plant of the gourd family ( Cucurbitaceae ), which has run wild in Central Europe partially. The chayote is the only species of the genus Echinocystis.

Features

The chayote is an annual climber. The stems are one to six, rarely eight feet long. You are angular furrowed and almost bald. Upper Windwärts they are highly branched. The vines are in three parts. The leaves are long-petiolate and have a palmately five -lobed leaf blade with a heart-shaped leaf base. The leaf margin is covered with short, the top is of tubercle rough. The lobes are narrow, triangular and pointed and fine hair.

The species is monoecious, that is, at one plant individual male and female flowers are formed. The sepals are one to two millimeters long and awl-shaped. The corolla is white to yellowish white. The six corolla lobes are narrow triangular hairy and glandular - villous on both sides. The crown of the male flowers are three to five that the female flowers six to eight millimeters long.

The fruit is ellipsoidal and three to five inches long. It carries five to six millimeters long, soft spines. The seeds are 1.5 to 1.8 inches long and dark brown.

The chromosome number is 2n = 32

Dissemination and locations

The chayote is native to North America. She comes across North America before, with the exception of the north of Canada, the Southwest (California ) and the Southeast ( Florida to Louisiana). It can occur in their home as weeds, such as flood plains in corn and soybean fields where they make it difficult to harvest. Sometimes it grows in America and in hedges and thickets of the lowlands.

Outside of its natural range it is sometimes cultivated as an ornamental plant.

In Central Europe it is now naturalized as a neophyte. It occurs in Germany in the middle Rhine and the Elbe valley, in the lower Neckar valley and in the middle Saale valley. In Austria it occurs in South Burgenland, in March and lowest Thaya Valley (Lower Austria ), in Upper Austria, the East Styrian and unstable in North Tyrol on. It grows here in summer-warm, nutrient-rich shores hems of hill height level. In the western part of Romania ( between Valea Lui Mihai, Carei and Satu Mare) forms of these Neophyte mass stocks and the overgrown shrub and tree vegetation on the roadsides

Systematics and etymology

The genus is placed within the family in the subfamily Cucurbitoideae and in the tribe Sicyeae. My sister taxon is the genus Marah.

The genus name is derived from the Greek words for " hedgehog " ( echinos ) and " bladder " ( kystis ) and refers to the spiny fruit; the Art epithet lobata means lobed.

Pictures

Prickly fruit.

Ornamental sting cucumbers ( 40 to 60 mm ) next to a Pumpkin

Dry open fruit.

Smooth seeds.

Documents

• M. A. Fischer, K. Oswald, W. Adler: Exkursionsflora for Austria, Liechtenstein and South Tyrol. Third Edition, Upper Austria, Biology Centre of the Upper Austrian Provincial Museum, Linz 2008, ISBN 978-3-85474-187-9
• Siegmund Seybold (ed.): Schmeil Fitschen - interactive ( CD -Rom ), Quelle & Meyer, Wiebelsheim 2001/2002, ISBN 3-494-01327-6