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Acanthosicyos

Genus of flowering plants

Summary

Genus of flowering plants

  • Acanthosicyos horridus
  • Acanthosicyos naudinianus

Acanthosicyos is a genus of thorny shrubs of the botanical family Cucurbitaceae, subfamily Cucurbitoideae. The genus name comes from Ancient Greek ἄκανθα (ákantha), meaning "thorn", and σικύος (sikúos), meaning "cucumber, gourd".

Species

Endemic to the Namib Desert in Africa, this genus is represented by two known species including Acanthosicyos horridus, the nara melon, an important food plant in its native range. Both species are dioecious.

ImageNameDistributionDescription
[[File:Gemsbok Cucumber (Acanthosicyos naudinianus) (6865171484).jpg120px]]Gemsbok cucumber (Acanthosicyos naudinianus)western Botswana, eastern Namibia and northern South AfricaA trailing herb with large, palmate leaves. The fruit is mildly poisonous when unripe.
[[File:0892 Narafrucht Sossusvlei.JPG120px]]Nara melon (Acanthosicyos horridus)Native to Namib Desert but predominantly found within a narrow coastal strip in NamibiaIt is almost exclusively found in sand dunes that have subterranean water supplies available to the plant. The nara plant is leafless, the modified stems and spines serve as the photosynthetic "organs" of the plant.

Both the Nara and the Gemsbok Cucumber are edible; however, eating unripe fruit is highly inadvisable due to the presence of chemicals which "burn" the throat and esophagus. The bushmen of the Kalahari eat the Gemsbok Cucumber after it has been roasted in a fire for a couple of hours. This cooking renders the "burning" chemicals harmless; even if the cooked pulp is still slightly bitter, the Bushman seem to relish eating them, sucking out the contents and either spitting out or chewing up the plentiful seeds.

References

References

  1. (1998). "The Arid Frontier: Interactive Management of Environment and Development". Kluwer Academic Publishers.
  2. Quattrocchi, Umberto. (1999). "CRC World Dictionary of Plants Names: Common Names, Scientific Names, Eponyms, Synonyms, and Etymology". CRC Press.
  3. "PROTA4U".
  4. (2019). "Soil bacterial community associated with the dioecious Acanthosicyos horridus in the Namib Desert". Biology and Fertility of Soils.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

benincaseae cucurbitaceae-genera flora-of-africa dioecious-plants
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