Cucurbitaceae

Most of the plants in this family are annual vines, but some are woody lianas, thorny shrubs, or trees (Dendrosicyos). Many species have large, yellow or white flowers. The stems are hairy and pentangular. Tendrils are present at 90° to the leaf petioles at nodes. Leaves are exstipulate, alternate, simple palmately lobed or palmately compound. The flowers are unisexual, with male and female flowers on different plants (dioecious) or on the same plant (monoecious). The female flowers have inferior ovaries. The fruit is often a kind of modified berry called a pepo.^[7]: 2

One of the oldest fossil cucurbits so far is †Cucurbitaciphyllum lobatum from the Paleocene epoch, found at Shirley Canal, Montana. It was described for the first time in 1924 by the paleobotanist Frank Hall Knowlton. The fossil leaf is palmate, trilobed with rounded lobal sinuses and an entire or serrate margin. It has a leaf pattern similar to the members of the genera Kedrostis, Melothria and Zehneria.^[8]

The most recent classification of Cucurbitaceae delineates 15 tribes:^[9][10]

Modern molecular phylogenetics suggest the following relationships:^{[9][11][12][13][14][15]}

Sweet potato whitefly is the vector of a number of cucurbit viruses that cause yellowing symptoms throughout the southern United States.^[16]

• Bates D, Robinson R, Jeffrey C, eds. (1990). Biology and Utilization of the Cucurbitaceae. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-1670-5.
• Jeffrey C. (2005). "A new system of Cucurbitaceae". Bot. Zhurn. 90: 332–335.

• Cucurbitaceae in T.C. Andres (1995 onwards).
• Cucurbitaceae in L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz (1992 onwards). The families of flowering plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, information retrieval.