The Cucurbitaceae, also called cucurbits or the gourd family, are a plant family consisting of about 965 species in around 95 genera. Those most important to humans are the following:
Cercocarpus, commonly known as mountain mahogany, is a small genus of at least nine species of nitrogen-fixing flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae. They are native to the western United States and northern Mexico, where they grow in chaparral and semidesert habitats and climates, often at high altitudes. Several are found in the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion.
Carl Johan Fredrik Skottsberg was a Swedish botanist and explorer of Antarctica.
Nyctaginaceae, the four o'clock family, is a family of around 33 genera and 290 species of flowering plants, widely distributed in tropical and subtropical regions, with a few representatives in temperate regions. The family has a unique fruit type, called an "anthocarp", and many genera have extremely large pollen grains.
Joseph Nelson Rose was an American botanist. He was born in Union County, Indiana. His father died serving during the Civil War when Joseph Rose was a young boy. He later graduated from high school in Liberty, Indiana.
Cyrus Guernsey Pringle was an American botanist who spent a career of 35 years cataloguing the plants of North America. He was a prolific collector and accomplished botanical explorer. The standard author abbreviation Pringle is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Pseudotrillium is a monotypic genus of flowering plant in the family Melanthiaceae. Its sole species, Pseudotrillium rivale, is commonly known as the brook wakerobin. It is endemic to the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon and northern California. The Latin specific epithet rivale means “growing by streams”, with reference to a preferred habitat.
Staphylea, called bladdernuts, is a small genus of 10 or 11 species of flowering plants in the family Staphyleaceae, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The highest species diversity is in China, where four species occur.
Sereno Watson was an American botanist. Watson was born December 1, 1826 in East Windsor Hill, Connecticut. Graduating from Yale in 1847 in Biology, he drifted through various occupations until, in California, he joined the Clarence King Expedition and eventually became its expedition botanist. Appointed by Asa Gray as assistant in the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University in 1873, he later became its curator, a position he maintained until his death. Watson was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1874, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1889. He died March 9, 1892 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Melothria scabra, commonly known as the cucamelon, Mexican miniature watermelon, Mexican sour cucumber, Mexican sour gherkin, mouse melon, or pepquinos, is a species of flowering plant in the cucurbit family grown for its edible fruit. Its native range spans Mexico to Venezuela. Cucumis melo Agrestis and Cucumis callosus is cultivated as Chibber Fruit or Kachri in South Asia and can also grow as weed. Fruits are about the size of grapes and taste like cucumbers with a tinge of sourness. It may have been eaten by indigenous peoples before the European colonization of the Americas began.
Rune Bertil Nordenstam is a Swedish botanist and professor emeritus at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in the Department of Phanerogamic Botany. He has worked with Colchicaceae, Senecioneae and Calenduleae, was the editor of Compositae Newsletter newsletter since 1990, and is a Tribal Coordinator for The International Compositae Alliance with responsibility for the tribes Calenduleae and Senecioneae.
Conrad Vernon Morton was an American botanist, who did notable writings on Ferns. He was also a specialist in Gesneriaceae and Solanaceae for the Smithsonian Institution from 1928.
Jaliscoa is a genus of Mexican flowering plants in the family Asteraceae.
Tinantia is a genus of plants in the Commelinaceae, first described in 1839. They are commonly called widow's tears or false dayflowers due to their resemblance of the closely related true dayflowers of the genus Commelina. Tinantia is native to North and South America from Texas + Hispaniola to Argentina, with a center of diversity from Mexico to Nicaragua. Tinantia pringlei, an alpine native of Mexico, is grown as an ornamental in temperate areas and is also a common greenhouse weed.
Allium bigelovii, the New Mexico wild leek, is a plant species native to Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It grows on open, gravelly slopes at elevations of 500–1,700 m (1,600–5,600 ft).
Spermacoce ovalifolia, the broadleaf false buttonweed, is a species of plants in the Rubiaceae. It is native to Mexico, Central America, parts of the Caribbean, and South America.
Lopezia is a genus of plants of the family Onagraceae, largely restricted to Mexico and Central America.
Stillingia bicarpellaris is a species of flowering plant in the family Euphorbiaceae. It was described by Sereno Watson in 1886. It is native to northeastern Mexico.
Melothria is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cucurbitaceae, native to the Americas from the United States to Argentina, and with some introductions in Africa and elsewhere. A number of Old World species formerly in Melothria were reassigned to Cucumis.
Rhodosciadium is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Apiaceae.
