Strange marrow?

I spotted this plant when visiting a friend – it was in the garden next door. It looks like a climbing marrow. Do you know what it is?

S Smith, Waikato

I checked with some horticultural colleagues and they confirmed this is Lagenaria siceraria, a type of gourd which has many common names including calabash, lauki, loki, new Guinea bean and opo squash. Gourds are probably one of the earliest cultivated plants, and not only for food, as the skins of dried out fruits were used as containers – hence yet another name, bottle gourd. Dried whole, they also make great percussion instruments with the large seeds rattling around inside a tough woody skin. They’re members of the cucurbit family, related to cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, courgettes, etc. The plant is vine-like, sprawling over the ground and clambering up anything in its path. in the garden you can train it up a frame, as in your photo, so the fruit hangs safe from damage which can occur in close contact with the soil. The fruits come in a variety of shapes, some small and bottle-shaped, some ‘giant beans’ up to a metre or more long, while calabash ones come in a variety of rounded and bulbous shapes.

Harvested fresh when fully grown, the skin is relatively smooth with white flesh that can be cooked in curries, tomato dishes, stir fries and the like. A quick search of the web comes up with a myriad of ways to cook and serve them. The fruits have also been used in traditional treatments for some ailments, but beware of eating them raw or drinking raw juice as they contain cucurbitacins which taste bitter and can cause illness if ingested in high concentrations. Seed is available from a range of sources including egmont Seeds and Kings Seeds.