Edible fruit. Honey nectar plants. medicinal plant.

annual herb with thick climbing or creeping stems. The root system is well developed and roots are up to 40 cm deep and 5 m long. The stems are branching, covered in soft white pubescence, up to 10 m long, and often produce adventitious roots at nodes. The petioles are densely pubescent, 5-20 cm long, and estipulate. The plant bears tendrils at 90 degrees to the leaf axil; these are lightly pubescent, coiled, and 2-5 branched. thin leaves are alternate, simple, palmately veined, round to reniform, basally cordate, apically obtuse, unlobed to shallowly 5-7 lobed, 7-30 cm across, broader than long, stiff to soft pubescent, and finely dentate. monoecious (unisexual flowers, with male and female on the same plant), bearing solitary actinomorphic flowers (10-20 cm across) that are open for a single day. The flowers produce nectar and are aromatic. Staminate flowers are 20-25 times more numerous than pistillate flowers, but produce less nectar. The campanulate calyx is covered in white pubescence and bears, 5 free sepals; each sepal is linear-lanceolate and 0.5-2 cm long. The yellow to orange corolla is tubular, at least 5 cm long and broad, 5-parted with reflexed petals that are ovate, apically obtuse, and marginally rugose. fruits are technically classified as berries; they are highly variable in shape, color, and size. The shape can be an elongated cylinder, oval, flattened, globular, heart-shaped, and/or tapering to a curved neck on one or both ends. The length is from 5.8 to 71.6 cm and width from 11.2 to 48.6 cm. The skin can be smooth, warty, wrinkled, or/and have shallow to deep longitudinal ridges. Often there is more than one color on the soft to hard skin: red, white, gray, black, green, cream, and/or orange. The flesh is also variable in color and thickness. It can be white, yellow, or orange, and usually from 1 to 6.4 cm thick. Some pumpkins and squashes are over 90 kg (~200 pounds), but they usually range from 0.3 to 50 kg. Each fruit bears few to numerous seeds. Flowering from February-May.

Cultivated places and farms.