About Bottle Gourd:- The calabash, Lagenaria siceraria (synonym Lagenaria vulgaris Ser.), also known as opo squash, bottle gourd or long melon, is a vine grown for its fruit, which can either be harvested young and used as a vegetable , or harvestemature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil, or pipe. The fresh fruit has a light green smooth skin and a white flesh. Rounder varieties are called calabash gourds. They come in a variety of shapes, they can be huge and rounded, or small and bottle shaped, or slim and serpentine, more than a metre long.
The calabash was one of the first cultivated plants in the world, grown not primarily for food, but for use as a water container. The bottle gourd may have been carried from Africa to Asia, Europe and the Americas in the course of human migration or by seeds floating across the oceans inside the gourd. It has been proven to be in the New World prior to the arrival of Columbus. It shares its common name with that of the calabash tree
Origin and dispersal:-
It is a commonly cultivated plant in tropical and subtropical areas of the world, now believed by some to have spread or originated from wild populations in southern Africa. Stands of Lagenaria siceraria that may be source plants, and not merely domesticated stands run wild, were reported recently in Zimbabwe. This apparent domestication source plant produces thinner-walled fruit that, when dried, would not endure the rigors of use on long journeys as a water container. Today's calabash may owe its tough, waterproof wall toselsction pressures over its long histroy of domestication.
