Flora of North America species comparison

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Cayaponia quinqueloba

five-lobe-cucumber
Stems

sulcate, puberulent;

tendrils usually unbranched, sometimes 2-branched.
Leaves

petiole 15–45 mm, usually villous-hirsute, sometimes villous, moderately to densely short stipitate-glandular;

blade ovate to deltate or pentagonal, shallowly to deeply palmately 3–5-lobed, 4–11(–15) × 4–12(–17) cm, terminal lobe ovate-trullate, broadest at base or near middle, sometimes sublobed, base angular-cordate, margins denticulate to serrulate, surfaces sparsely villosulous to hirsutulous (not white-sericeous abaxially).
Flowers

sepals linear, 1–2 mm;

petals white to cream, corolla 6–10 mm; pistillate and staminate flowers 1–3(–5), axillary.
Fruits

1–3(–5), red to scarlet, ellipsoid-cylindric, 1–1.6(–2) cm;

peduncle 1–4 mm.
Seeds

3–12, 6–8 mm.
Vines

herbaceous.

Cayaponia quinqueloba
Phenology Flowering Jun–Oct(–Nov).
Habitat Swamp forests, floodplain and bottomland woods, clearings in alluvial woods, stream banks, oak-sweetgum-hackberry flatwoods, maple woods, bluffs, hardwood hammocks, roadsides, ditches, spoil banks
Elevation 10–200 m (0–700 ft)
Distribution
from FNA
AL; AR; FL; GA; LA; MO; MS; OK; SC; TN; TX
[WildflowerSearch map]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Leaves of Cayaponia quinqueloba (as in C. americana and some other cucurbits) are variable in shape. Cayaponia grandifolia has been treated as distinct from C. quinqueloba based on extremes of leaf form, C. grandifolia with deltate to ovate-deltate lobes broadest at the base (for example, R. K. Godfrey and J. W. Wooten 1981). The range of C. grandifolia is described as Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, sympatric with C. quinqueloba; only a single variable species appears to exist.

Most collections of Cayaponia quinqueloba show plants with only pistillate flowers, relatively few with both pistillate and staminate flowers (the latter usually relatively less numerous on a given plant).

Apparently pistillate specimens may be from bisexual plants, the sampled portion of the stem lacking staminate flowers.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 6, p. 47.
Parent taxa Cucurbitaceae > Cayaponia
Sibling taxa
C. americana
Synonyms Arkezostis quinqueloba, Bryonia boykinii, C. boykinii, C. grandifolia, Melothria grandifolia
Name authority (Rafinesque) Shinners: Field & Lab. 25: 32. (1957)
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



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