Coccinia grandis (L.) Voigt

Global description
 
Coccinia grandis is a climbing or creeping lianescent plant, with simple tendrils, green when young, with gray bark when older. The simple, alternate, stalked leaves have an entire lamina, deeply palmatilobate, with entire margin dotted with small yellow or reddish glandular tines. The male flowers and female flowers are separate and solitary. Both have triangular sepals and a campanulate corolla white with yellowish green heart. The inedible fruit is a berry, with the shape of a small sausage, streaked with yellow and red when ripe, smooth, rounded at the ends, with many seeds.

Cotyledons
 
Cotyledons are spatulate to obovate, subsessile, 10 mm long and 5 mm wide, fleshy.
 
First leaves
 
The first leaves are simple, alternate, long-stalked. The leaf blade is 3-5 palmatilobate, deeply cordate at base, slightly fleshy, margin dotted with small yellow to reddish tuberculate tines.
 
General habit
 
Vivacious lianescent plant with simple tendrils, creeping or climbing, leathery to almost fleshy texture.
 
Underground system
 
The underground system is a tuberous rhizome from which many several lianescent stems may emerge.
 
Stem
 
The stem is cylindrical, solid, glabrous. It is green in color, becoming gray with age.
 
Leaf
 
The leaves are simple alternate, with petiole 2 to 5 cm long. The lamina is whole, more or less deeply 3-5 palmatilobate, oval to subpentagonal or subcircular, long and wide 3.5 to 12 cm, with rounded mucronate apex and the base deeply cordate. The faces are glabrous. The upper side is punctuated with small glands, with at the base, on either side of the central rib, 2 to 4 large rounded yellowish green glands. The margin is entire, dotted with small reddish yellow glandular tines. At the axils of each leaf is a simple long tendril, with the end firstly straight and then quickly corkscrew.

Inflorescence
 
Male and female flowers are separate on the same tree. The male flowers and female flowers are solitary.
 
Flower
 
Male flowers are supported by a long pedicel of 2 to 6 cm; with an obconical floral tube, glabrous, triangular to narrowly oval sepals 2.5 to 6 mm long, a campanulate white corolla of 14 to 20 mm long and 10 to 15 mm in diameter, with triangular lobes, fused in the lower half, and with well-marked green veins, the median finished with a reddish mucro. In the center, there are 3 stamens fused with anthers with 2 deeply sinuate loculus. Female flowers are supported by a long stalk of 1 to 3 cm. Corolla is campanulate, 3 to 4 cm wide, white with yellowish green heart. Ovary inferior, elongated 10 to 15 mm long.
 
Fruit
 
The fruit is a smooth berry (in the form of small sausage), oblong to cylindrical with a rounded end, 3 to 6 cm long and 15 to 35 mm wide. At first, it is green, more or less streaked with white, it then turns bright red when mature. It contains a red pulp containing numerous horizontal seeds.
 
Seed
 
The seed is pear-shaped, biconvex flattened with thickened margin, 6 mm long and 3 mm wide and 1.5 mm thick.

Origin

Coccinia grandis is native to paleotropical regions.

Worldwide distribution

Species introduced in the south of the USA, South America (Colombia, Guyana, Brazil), East Africa (Mozambique), Mauritius and Reunion Island, and tropical Australia.

https://www.gbif.org/species/2874564