Ku Gua

Ku Gua is the fruit of Momordica charantia L. (Cucurbitaceae), bitter melon or bitter gourd, an annual climbing or trailing vine native to tropical Asia and widely cultivated across China, India, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa. The slender, ridged stems bear simple tendrils and alternate, deeply 5–7-lobed, palmately veined leaves 4–12 cm wide. Plants are monoecious with solitary, pale-yellow, five-petaled flowers on long peduncles. The fruit is an oblong to fusiform pepo 8–25 cm long, conspicuously warty and ribbed, green when immature and turning orange-yellow at maturity, splitting into three valves to expose a crimson aril surrounding flat, sculpted seeds. Immature fruits are intensely bitter from cucurbitacins and the steroidal glycoside charantin; harvested fresh or sliced and dried. Used to clear summer-heat in TCM, as a hypoglycemic in Ayurveda (karela), and widely investigated in modern phytomedicine for blood-glucose effects.