BOTTLE-GOURD (gourd used for making bottles; see below), Lagenaria. A genus of plants of the natural order Cueurbitacete, nearly allied to the Gourd (Cucurbita), iu which it was until recently included. One of the most marked distinctions between them is the very tumid bor der of the seeds of the bottle-gourds, which have also all the anthers separate, and have white flowers. while those of the gourds proper are yellow. The common Bottle-Gourd or False Cal abash (Lagena•ia volgaris) is believed to be a native of India and other warm parts of the Old World, but is now common almost everywhere in warm climates. It is a climbing, musky-scented annual, clothed with soft down, having its flowers in clusters, and a large fruit, from 1 to even 6 feet in length, which is usually shaped like a bot tle, an urn, or a club. The fruit has a hard rind, and when the pulp is removed and the rind dried, it is used in many countries for holding water, and is generally called a Calabash. The bottle-gourd, in its wild state, is very bitter, and is said to be poisonous, and even in cultiva tion some of its varieties exhibit not a little of the bitterness and purgative properties of colo cynth. The bottle-gourd appears to have been
introduced into Europe about the close of the Sixteenth Century: but it requires for its advan tageous cultivation a warmer climate than that of any part of Great Britain, where, although it succeeds well enough in a hotbed, it is chiefly known as an object of curiosity. It is, however, much cultivated in warmer countries as an escu lent, and is an important article of food to the poorer Arabs, who boil it with vinegar, or make a pudding of it in its own rind with rice and meat. It is also used when young as we employ summer squash. This plant is often grown in the United States, where it is known as Hercules's club, sugar-trough, snake, dipper-gourd. etc. For illust rat ion, sec CUCUMBEIL