Leaves:
Broad, 5-angled or 5-lobed, heart-shaped at base, rough,
sometimes enormous, on stout petioles. Fruit: From 3 to 10
bur-like, yellowish, prickly seed-vessels in a star-shaped
cluster, each containing one seed.
Preferred Habitat - Moist, shady waste ground; banks of streams.
Flowering Season - June-September.
Distribution - Quebec to the Gulf States, and westward beyond the
Mississippi.
In a damp, shady, waste corner, perhaps the first weed to take
possession is the star cucumber, a poor relation of the musk and
water melons, the squash, cucumber, pumpkin, and gourd of the
garden. Its sole use yet discovered is to screen ugly fences and
rubbish heaps by climbing and trailing luxuriantly over
everything within reach. That it thinks more highly of its own
importance in the world than men do of it, is shown by the
precaution it takes to insure a continuance of its species. By
separating the sexes of its flowers, like Quakers at meeting, it
prevents self-fertilization, and compels its small-winged
visitors to carry the smooth-banded, rough pollen from the
staminate to the tiny pistillate group.
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