Mukia Arn.

Scientific Description

Family Cucurbitaceae.

Habit and leaf form. Herbs, or herbaceous climbers (or trailing). Annual, or perennial. Leaves cauline (ass.). Plants with neither basal nor terminal concentrations of leaves. Stem internodes solid (ass.). Thickened rootstock. Climbing (or trailing); tendril climbers (simple, coiled distally). Tendrils simple. Mesophytic to xerophytic. Leaves alternate; spiral; petiolate; non-sheathing; simple. Leaf blades dissected (dentate to palmately 3–5 lobed); broadly ovate (to lanceolate); when simple/dissected, palmately lobed; palmately veined; cross-venulate; cordate. Leaves without stipules (tendrils in stipular position). Leaf blade margins dentate. Leaves without a persistent basal meristem. Leaf anatomy. Hairs present (scabrid with tubercle-based hairs). Extra-floral nectaries absent.

Reproductive type, pollination. Fertile flowers functionally male and functionally female. Unisexual flowers present. Plants monoecious. Female flowers solitary, or aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; with staminodes (3 staminodes), or without staminodes. Male flowers solitary, or aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; without pistillodes (ass.). Entomophilous.

Inflorescence and flower features. Flowers solitary (male and female), or aggregated in ‘inflorescences’ (male and female); in racemes (male flowers), or in fascicles (or clusters of male and/or female flowers). Inflorescences axillary. Flowers pedicellate (male), or sessile (or nearly so; female); ebracteate (ass.); ebracteolate (ass.); small to large; regular, or somewhat irregular. The floral asymmetry most noticeably involving the androecium. Flowers cyclic. Free hypanthium present; campanulate (in male flowers), or urceolate (in female flowers, the lower part narrowed above into a short neck and then expanded into a narrowly campanulate upper part); of female flowers adnate to the ovary in the lower part. Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla; 10; 2 -whorled; isomerous. Calyx present; 5; 1 -whorled; gamosepalous; blunt-lobed, or toothed; imbricate, or open in bud; campanulate (or turbinate); regular. Calyx lobes narrowly ovate (to subulate). Corolla present; 5; 1 -whorled; gamopetalous; more or less valvate; rotate, or campanulate; regular; yellow. Corolla lobes ovate (to narrowly ovate). Fertile stamens present, or absent. Androecial members definite in number. Androecium 3. Androecial members branched and unbranched, or unbranched; adnate (to the hypanthium); all equal (ass.); free of one another; 1 -whorled. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 3; distinctly dissimilar in shape (uni/bilocular); reduced in number relative to the adjacent perianth; oppositisepalous (about the middle of the hypanthium, on calyx tube below the petals). Filaments appendiculate, or not appendiculate. Anthers cohering, or connivent, or separate from one another; adnate; dehiscing via longitudinal slits; extrorse; unilocular (1 anther), or bilocular (2 anthers); bisporangiate, or bisporangiate and tetrasporangiate, or tetrasporangiate; appendaged (via the prolonged connective), or unappendaged. Fertile gynoecium present, or absent (from male flowers). Gynoecium 1 carpelled, or 2–5 carpelled. The pistil 1–3 celled. Gynoecium syncarpous; of one carpel, or synovarious, or synstylovarious, or eu-syncarpous; inferior. Ovary unilocular, or plurilocular; 1–3 locular. Gynoecium stylate. Styles 1; partially joined; apical. Stigmas 1; commissural; 2–3 - lobed. Placentation parietal; when the ovary plurilocular, axile. Ovules in the single cavity 5–50; 5–50 per locule (few to many); pendulous, or horizontal, or ascending; non-arillate; anatropous.

Fruit and seed features. Fruit (4–)8–40 mm long; 0.4–2.8 cm in diameter; fleshy; not spinose; indehiscent; few to many. Seeds non-endospermic; medium sized to large; winged, or wingless. Cotyledons 2 (large, flat). Embryo straight.

Etymology. Said to be from the Malabar name murra.