WorldFloraDB - Proboscidea louisianica

Characteristics

An annual herb. It is a soft stemmed plant. It grows 30-90 cm high. It branches to spread over a metre across. The leaves are like pumpkin leaves. The leaves are large and 30 cm long by 12 cm across. They are covered with glandular nectar. The plant produces a slimy exudate. The flowers are tube shaped and purplish with yellow mottling inside. They are 3-6 cm long. They often have green, purple or violet spots. The plant has a bad scent. The fruit is a tear shaped capsule. It has a green outer husk. The fruit are fleshy at first. Later the inner woody shell remains and it has a long curved beak. These capsule turn yellow to black at maturity. The capsules have rough grooves at the base. They are 10-17 cm long. The beak eventually splits open and the shell opens.

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Densely glandular-pubescent annual, beginning to bloom when only 1–2 dm, but becoming coarse, freely branched, and sprawling-ascending, to ca 6 dm tall and 2 m wide; lvs long-petioled, subrotund to reniform-cordate, irregularly sinuate to entire, the later ones to 25 cm; racemes mostly 8–20-fld; cal 1 cm or more, somewhat accrescent, but deciduous; cor 3.5–5.5 cm long and wide, dull whitish or yellowish, mottled and spotted with purple, or golden-yellow and marked with vermilion; fr 1–2 dm. A common weed in much of s. and c. U.S., frequently in cattle feed-lots, native perhaps as far n. as Ind., cult. for its curious frs (used as pickles) and occasionally escaped as far n. as Minn. and Me. (Martynia l.)

Life form	annual
Growth form	herb
Growth support	free-standing
Foliage retention	deciduous
Sexuality	hermaphrodite
Pollination	-
Spread	-
Mature width (meter)	-
Mature height (meter)	1.0
Root system	-
Rooting depth (meter)	-
Root diameter (meter)	-
Flower color	-
Blooming months	-
Fruit color	-
Fruiting months	-
Nitrogen fixer	-
Photosynthetic pathway	-

Environment

River banks and waste places. Naturalized as a weed in Portugal and S.E. Russia.

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It needs warmth and sun. It can grow in warm temperate and tropical places.

Light
Soil humidity
Soil texture
Soil acidity
Soil nutriment	-
Hardiness (USDA)

Usage

The young pods are pickled in vinegar and eaten. They can also be sliced and added to soups as thickening. The cooked leaves and roasted seed are also eaten. The seeds also yield an edible oil.

Uses	dye fiber oil
Edible	fruits leaves pods roots seeds
Therapeutic use	-
Human toxicity	-
Animal toxicity	-

Cultivation

Plants are grown from seed.

Mode	seedlings
Germination duration (days)	10
Germination temperacture (C°)	21
Germination luminosity	-
Germination treatment	-
Minimum temperature (C°)	-
Optimum temperature (C°)	-
Size	-
Vigor	-
Productivity	-