Wild cucumber

Echinocystis lobata is a vigorous annual herbaceous vine of the Cucurbitaceae family, climbing 3 to 8 metres over shrubs, fences and lower trees by means of slender, branched three-forked tendrils arising opposite each leaf. The alternate leaves are bright green, 5 to 12 centimetres across, palmately five-lobed with shallow, triangular, pointed lobes and finely toothed margins, borne on long petioles. The plant is monoecious: the small, star-shaped, greenish-white male flowers, each 8 to 12 millimetres across with six narrow petals, are borne in long, erect, branched panicles from the leaf axils, while solitary female flowers occur at the same nodes. The distinctive fruit is an oval, inflated, papery bladder 3 to 5 centimetres long, densely covered in soft prickles, that ripens to brown and splits open at the base to expel four large, flat, dark-brown seeds. Native to eastern and central North America, it inhabits moist thickets, streambanks, fencerows and disturbed bottomlands.