Momordica spinosa Chiov.

Woody tuberous-rooted somewhat decumbent spiny shrub or climber.. Young stems green, herbaceous, pubescent; older stems thickened, woody, leafless, with smooth grey or brownish bark, bearing at each node usually a pair of straight or curved rather blunt 4–32 mm. long spines.. Leaf-blade subpentagonal or suborbicular in outline, deeply cordate and narrowly decurrent on to the petiole, obtuse or rounded and apiculate, pubescent, dark green, foetid when crushed, 17–72 mm, long, 23–58 mm. broad, usually broader than long, shallowly 5-lobed; lobes broadly triangular, ± rounded; petiole 8–25 mm. long, the base occasionally thickened and persistent.. Tendrils simple, solitary or more usually paired at the nodes, in the latter case one often or rarely both reduced to a small spine, this latter and the bases of the tendrils proper later becoming thickened and forming the paired spines of the older stems.. Dioecious.. Male flowers in many-flowered fascicles often on lateral leafless branches; receptacle-tube broadly campanulate, 2–3 mm. long; lobes green, pubescent, oblong or spathulate, rounded at the apex, 2.5–4 mm. long; petals yellow, often tinged greenish, oblong, rounded above, ± 10–11 mm. long and 6 mm. broad, the inner 3 with black basal markings, the outer 2 with incurved scales inside at the base; stamens 3, alternate with the scales; thecae curved.. Female flowers solitary or paired on pubescent 4.5–5 mm. long stalks, ebracteate; ovary beaked, softly spiny, ± 12 mm. long and 4–5 mm. across; receptacle-tube short; lobes obovate-spathulate, ± 4 mm. long, with the midrib prominent and excurrent in a mucro; petals obovate-spathulate, rounded above, 8–11 mm. long, 5–6 mm. broad, unspotted below.. Fruit on a 5–9 mm. long stalk, ovoid and beaked, yellow-orange, ± 70 mm. long and 35 mm. across, ornamented with ± 10 longitudinal rows of large somewhat laterally compressed soft curved blunt fleshy spines.. Seeds, each enclosed in a pocket of orange-red pulp, elliptic in outline, compressed, 1–2-grooved at the margins, ± 21 × 12 × 4 mm., with a slightly rough testa (fig. 3/11, p. 25).

It is a tropical plant. It grows in shrubland between 330-1,020 m above sea level. It can grow in arid places.