ABSTRACT
The plants are fast growing, trailing or climbing vines with stems and trendils. The genus Luffa is monoecious with annual vines. Tendrils arc branched; leaves are 5-7 lobed, nearly glabrous. Inflorescence is clustered racemose flowers mostly unisexual, yellow colored, large and showy, mostly monoecious (staminatc and pistillate flowers separately in the same plant), have campanulate showy corolla, calyx forming a perianth tube, calyx lobes alternating with corolla lobes, filament free, two stamens having two locules and one unilocular. Pstillate flowers arc borne singly in short peduncles. Usu ally staminate and pistillate flowers are borne in different axils but sometimes may be on the same node. Hermaphrodite form, which bears only bisexual flowers, like “satputia” cultivar of Luffa acutangula, is rare. Fruit is essentially a (inferior) berry, even though called pepo.
