Gourd(Fr. gourde, a swelling), a name applied in Europe to plants of the order cucurbi-taceoe in general, but restricted in the United States to the lagenaria, the hard shell of which is put to various domestic uses. To the gourd family belong the pumpkin, squash, watermelon, cucumber, muskmelon, and several others cultivated for ornament or known as weeds. The members of the family are succulent tendril-bearing herbs with a watery juice; alternate and palmately ribbed, lobed, or angled leaves, and monoecious, sometimes dioecious flowers; the calyx coherent with the ovary (flower superior); corolla mostly monopetalous; the stamens are usually three and singularly contorted and united; the fruit generally fleshy, but sometimes with a hard shell when ripe. The common gourd, bottle or calabash gourd, lagenaria vulgaris, is a native of Asia and Africa; it climbs to a great distance, and has clammy, unpleasantly scented leaves. The sterile flowers are on long stalks, white with greenish veins; the fertile on short stalks, and producing a fruit that varies much in shape. The commonest form is shaped like a water bottle with a large base and a swollen handle; the rind of this when ripe is very hard and woody.

By making an opening at the place where the stem joins the fruit and removing the contents, it makes, after soaking to remove the bitterness, an excellent water bottle. "With an opening in the side it is a convenient dipper; and when sawed in two across the larger part, the lower portion forms a dish, while the upper serves as a funnel. A variety is known at the west as sugar-trough gourd the large flattened-spherical shell of which will hold several gallons. Hercules's club or California gourd produces a fruit sometimes 5 or 6 ft. long. Under the name of ornamental or fancy gourds several, mostly species of cucur-bita, are grown for their small, handsomely marked, and variously shaped fruit. (See Pumpkin, and Squash.)

Common Gourd (Lagenaria vulgaris).