Flora Somalia, Vol 1, (1993) Author: by C. Jeffrey & M. Thulin [updated by M. Thulin 2008]
Names
COCCINIA sp. [family CUCURBITACEAE], = Carter 868.
Information
Scandent or trailing herb or softly woody shrub to 2.5 m; young shoots hairy. Leaves ovate or broadly ovate in outline, cordate, sinuate-dentate with brownish-red glandular teeth, hispid becoming scabrid-punctate above, glabrous beneath, 5.5–6.5 x 6.5–8 cm, deeply palmately 5-lobed, the lobes pinnately lobulate, rounded, apiculate; petiole 3–6.5 cm long. Male flowers in small shortly pedunculate clusters. Pedicel 7 mm long. Hypanthium obconic, 3.5 mm long, villous. Sepals lanceolate, 4 mm long. Corolla yellow or white with green veins. Female flowers unknown. Fruit ellipsoid, green with longitudinal lines of white spots, becoming red, 5.5–6 x 3–4 cm. Pedicel 2 cm long. Seeds asymmetrically ovate in outline, compressed, c. 7 x 3 mm, fibrillose.
Range
N1
Altitude range
300–1580 m.
Distribution
SOMALIA Carter 868; Godding 155.
Distribution (external)
E Ethiopia
Notes
Saar (Som.). The two Somali collections cited are here provisionally associated with an Ethiopian plant represented by, e.g., De Wilde 4793, Burger 2947A and Tadesse Ebba 622. The description is mainly based on the Ethiopian material.