Apodanthera is a genus of about 25 perennial flowering plants in the cucumber and gourd family Cucurbitaceae, order Cucurbitales. The genus was described by Scottish botanist George Arnott Walker-Arnott in 1841, published in Hooker's Journal of Botany. Its name derives from the Greek words a- (without), podos (foot), and anthera (anther), referring to the distinctively sessile — stalkless — anthers of its flowers.
Members of the genus are prostrate or trailing vines with tuberous roots, strigose stems, and unbranched or few-branched tendrils. The leaves are reniform to heart-shaped, unlobed or shallowly five-lobed with rounded lobes, and dentate margins that are often wavy or crisped. Flowers are yellow with five distinct petals 16–35 mm long in a broadly funnel-shaped corolla; plants are generally monoecious, with staminate flowers borne in small racemes and pistillate flowers in fascicles, and have been observed to be gender-diphasic — shifting from male to female flowering over time. The fruits are pepos (a berry type characteristic of the Cucurbitaceae), silvery green to green with raised darker longitudinal stripes, subglobose, smooth or ribbed, and indehiscent; each fruit contains up to 80 seeds with a distinctive broad pale marginal band.
The genus ranges from the southwestern United States (Arizona, New Mexico, Texas) through Mexico and Central America into South America, where it extends from Ecuador and eastern Brazil south to northern Argentina and Uruguay. Only one species, Apodanthera undulata A.Gray — the "melon loco" — reaches the flora of the United States. One Andean species, A. herrerae (now treated as a synonym of A. mandonii), has been cultivated for its edible tubers.
Etymology
The name Apodanthera derives from the Greek a- (without), podos (foot), and anthera (anther), alluding to the nearly sessile (stalkless) stamens characteristic of the genus. In the southwestern United States, the species A. undulata is commonly known as "melon loco" (wild melon).
Distribution
Apodanthera is distributed across the Americas, from the southwestern United States (Arizona, New Mexico, Texas) through Mexico and Central America into South America, where it occurs in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil (northeast, southeast, south, and west-central regions), Argentina, and Uruguay. Only one species (A. undulata) reaches the United States flora.
Ecology
Plants of Apodanthera are perennials with tuberous roots suited to dry, seasonally arid environments. They have been documented as gender-diphasic, meaning individual plants switch from staminate (male) to pistillate (female) flowering over the course of a season — a reproductive strategy noted by Delesalle (1989).
Cultural Uses
Apodanthera herrerae Harms, a species of Andean South America (now treated as a synonym of A. mandonii), is cultivated locally for its edible tuberous roots.
