Calabash

Calabash (Lagenaria siceraria), also known as bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, New Guinea butter bean or Tasmania bean, is a vine which is grown for its fruit. It belongs to the family Cucurbitaceae, is native to tropical Africa, and cultivated across the tropics. It can be either harvested young to be consumed as a vegetable, or harvested mature to be dried and used as a kitchen utensil (typically as a ladle or bowl), beverage container or a musical instrument. When it is fresh, the fruit has a light green smooth skin and white flesh.

Calabash fruits have a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle-shaped, or slim and serpentine, and they can grow to be over a metre long. Rounder varieties are typically called calabash gourds (L. siceraria var. depressa). Calabash gourds can grow to great size. One grown in Taylorsvlle, Kentucky in 2001 weighed 111.5 kg (246 lb). The gourd was one of the world's first cultivated plants grown not primarily for food, but for use as containers.

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