Flora of North America species comparison

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Cucurbita palmata

coyote gourd, coyote gourd or melon, coyote melon
Habit Plants perennial; roots tuberous.
Stems

prostrate, often rooting adventitiously at nodes, to 2 m, villous-hirsute to hispid-hirsute with deflexed hairs, glabrescent and muriculate on angles in age;

tendrils mostly 3(–5)-branched 1–1.5 cm above base, retrorsely hispid, gland-tipped.
Leaves

petiole (2–)3–7 cm, densely hispid-hirsute with short, deflexed hairs mixed with pustulate hairs;

blade suborbiculate to depressed-ovate, palmately 5-lobed, sinuses 1/2–2/3 to petiole, 3–7 × 4–10 cm, usually broader than long or equally so, base cordate, lobes lanceolate-acuminate to triangular or triangular-lanceolate, sometimes irregularly sublobed, margins remotely crenate to remotely serrate-crenate, surfaces appressed-hispid abaxially and muriculate, hirsute-strigillose to hispid-strigose adaxially, midvein and major veins whitish adaxially from densely hispidulous-strigillose with white hairs, eglandular.
Peduncles

in fruit shallowly 5-ribbed, not abruptly expanded at point of fruit attachment, 3–8 cm, spongy.
Flowers

hypanthium cupulate to campanulate, 2–7(–20) mm;

sepals linear-subulate, 2–10 mm;

corolla golden yellow to yellow, tubular-campanulate, 2.5–5 cm;

anther filaments glabrous;

ovary densely pubescent.
Seeds

dull white, ovate to oblong, 9–14 mm, margins thickened-raised, surfaces smooth or slightly rough.
Pepos

dull green, narrowly 10-striped and white-mottled, ellipsoid-globose to globose or depressed-globose, 7–10 cm, smooth.
2n

= 40.

Cucurbita palmata
Phenology Flowering (Feb–)Apr–Sep(–Oct).
Habitat Rocky lake shores, washes, stream beds and overflow channels, lava beds, roadsides, waste places, alkali plains, creosote bush scrub, saltbush scrub, grassland-saltbush scrub, annual grasslands, chaparral-desert scrub, upland desert scrub
Elevation (-30–)200–1000(–1300) m ((-100–)700–3300(–4300) ft)
Distribution
from FNA
AZ; CA; NV; UT; Mexico (Baja California, Sonora)
[WildflowerSearch map]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Some plants of Cucurbita palmata from Baja California and California have uniformly whitish gray, hirsute-strigillose adaxial leaf surfaces; these have been recognized as C. californica. Most plants from Arizona and eastern San Bernardino County, California, and some from elsewhere in Baja California and California, have the midrib and major veins whitish like those of C. digitata.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 6, p. 52.
Parent taxa Cucurbitaceae > Cucurbita
Sibling taxa
C. digitata, C. ficifolia, C. foetidissima, C. maxima, C. melopepo, C. moschata, C. okeechobeensis, C. pepo
Synonyms C. californica
Name authority S. Watson: Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 11: 137. (1876)
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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