Trichosanthes cucumeroides ("Karasuri")

Japanese name: カラスウリ （烏瓜）
Scientific name: Trichosanthes cucumeroides

[Overview]
A climbing perennial found at forest edges, in thickets and along roadsides.
It has spindle-shaped, thickened tuberous roots that branch in bundles.
The tendrils are unbranched or forked in two.
The leaves are alternate, ovate-cordate to reniform-cordate, 6–10 cm in both length and width, shallowly 3–5-lobed or deeply 5-lobed.
The underside of the leaves is densely covered with short hairs.
It is dioecious.
Both male and female flowers open in the evening and wither the next morning.
The male inflorescence is about 2–10 cm long, and the female flowers are solitary in the leaf axils.
The flowers are white; the corolla is usually 5-lobed, with lace-like split margins that spread out to as much as 7–10 cm across.
The floral tube is very long, and pollination is by nocturnal hawkmoths.
The fruit is a round to elliptical berry 5–7 cm in diameter.
Young fruits are green with lengthwise stripes, and turn orange to red when ripe.
The flesh is yellow.
The seeds are brown, 0.7–0.9 cm long and 0.9–1.1 cm wide, shaped like the head of a mantis.
The band on the seed surface is 0.4–0.5 cm wide and thick.

[Uses]
The roots and seeds are used medicinally.
The seeds are likened to the uchide-no-kozuchi (magic mallet) and are sometimes kept in a wallet as a good-luck charm for wealth.

[Uses]
The Japanese alternative name Tamazusa likens the shape of the seeds to a musubi-bumi (a letter tied in a knot).

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