An annual, succulent, herbaceous vine, climbing by means of branched tendrils; stem angled, clammy-hairy, often climbing or trailing a distance of 15 to 25 feet. Leaves broad, nearly orbicular, of thin texture, but roughened on both surfaces, heart-shaped at the base and five-angled or five-lobed, the lobes sharp pointed, but the sinuses between the lobes usually not very deep. Petioles stout, 1 to 4 inches long. Flowers small, greenish white, of two kinds, staminate and pistillate. The staminate flowers arranged in loose racemes on very long stalks, with a five-toothed cup-shaped calyx tube, a five-parted rotate corolla and three stamens with their filaments united to form a short column, their anthers coherent. The pistillate or fertile flowers are arranged several together in capitate clusters, on short stalks, also with a five-parted calyx and corolla. Fruit a one-seeded, indehiscent burlike pod, dry when mature, armed with slender, rough spines, sessile in clusters of three to ten, each " cucumber " about one-half of an inch long.

In moist soil, chiefly along streams and rivers or in thickets and low woods, Quebec to Ontario and South Dakota, south to Florida, Texas and Kansas. Flowering from June to September.

Memoir 15 N. Y. State Museum

Plate 216

One-Seeded Bur Cucumber; Star Cucumber - Sicyos angulatus