Figleaf Gourd Cucurbita ficifolia
Figleaf Gourd is an introduced perennial vine, found in the lower 48 states.
More about this plant
Cucurbita ficifolia is a species of squash, grown for its edible seeds, fruit, and greens. It has common names including black seed squash, chilacayote, cidra, fig-leaf gourd, and Malabar gourd. This species is grown widely from Argentina and Chile to Mexico. It is also cultivated in regions of the world including India, Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Angola. Wikipedia →
Growing & care
USDA PLANTS · TRY- Hardiness
- ≥ zone 11 derived from its U.S. range
- Lifespan
- Perennial
- Foliage
- Broadleaf
Wildlife & pollinators
How pollinator value is scored →❧ Caterpillar hosts ~15 caterpillar species
Cucurbita supports ~15 caterpillar species.
Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a moderate genus.
Recorded feeding on Cucurbita in North America, including:
+ 8 more species → ↑ show fewer
✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 10 bee visitors
Specialist native bees depend on it.
Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Cucurbita is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.
10 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Figleaf Gourd :
+ 4 more bees → ↑ show fewer
Related plants
More Cucurbita →
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.
Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.
Sources for this entry (18) Open & cited
Cite this page Open data, please attribute
PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).
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