Cucumis cinereus (Cogn.) Ghebret. & Thulin

Perennial, prostrate or sometimes climbing, usually somewhat canescent. Stems several to many, produced annually from their thickened and woody corticate bases, slender, herbaceous, sulcate or costate-striate, usually not over 80 cm long, covered with short setose hairs often intermixed with longer pilose-hirsute hairs but usually appearing shortly hispid, ultimately glabrescent. Leaves often more or less secund on creeping stems, varying from suborbicular-pentagonal or reniform-cordate to broadly cordate-ovate or cordate-triangular in outline; rounded to acute and sub-acuminate at the apex and with a usually narrow and fairly deep, rarely broad and shallow, basal sinus, undivided and often 5-angled or sometimes distinctly to deeply palmately 3-5(-7)-lobed, 1.5-6 cm long and about as wide; the margin subentire to minutely denticulate or sometimes distinctly to rarely coarsely crenate-dentate, bluntly dentate or repand, usually shortly ciliate; upper surface usually rather densely and shortly adpressed strigose-scabrid, as a rule slightly more densely so towards the margin, lower surface rather densely and shortly setose-scabrid or punctate-scabrid and not infrequently aculeate-setose on the prominent slender main nerves, both surfaces ultimately turning punctate-scabrid when the stiff hairs wear off; petioles rather slender, sulcate-ribbed and coarsely and shortly hispid like the stems, 0.5-3 cm, rarely up to 4.5 cm, long. Tendrils filiform, slender to very slender, hispid as are the stems and petioles. Flowers monoecious, light yellow. Male flowers in contracted epedunculate few to many (about 20)-flowered racemes, but by reduction sometimes in few-flowered fascicles; pedicels slender, usually under 1 cm long, the lowermost occasionally up to 2 cm, articulated at the apex below the calyx, hispid as are the stems, petioles, tendrils and the rhachis; receptacle narrowly campanulate, rather laxly hispid, 1.5-3 mm long; sepals erect, subulate-triangular, 0.5-1.3 mm long; petals somewhat obovate or oblong-ovate, slightly and shortly hairy, 2.5-4(-5) mm long. Female flowers solitary rarely 2 or 3-nate; pedicels usually short, in fruit rarely exceeding 1.5 cm; ovary long-rostrate, shortly and densely hirsute-pubescent. Fruit ovoid-oblong or subglobose-ovoid to somewhat obovoid, usually abruptly contracted into a narrow rostrum, with about 8 fine longitudinal ribs, at first densely and shortly hirsute-pubescent, more or less glabrescent, orange when ripe, 13-19 mm long (with the rostrum) and 8-12 mm in diam., 6-14 seeded. Seeds ovate-elliptic much compressed, somewhat contracted at one end, finely rugose, finely or obscurely marginate, 4-6 mm long, 3-4.5 mm wide and 1-1.5 mm thick.

It is a subtropical plant.