Si Gua Luo

Luffa cylindrica (also known as Luffa aegyptiaca), commonly known as sponge gourd, vegetable sponge, smooth loofah or by its Chinese name Si Gua Luo, is a vigorous annual climbing vine in the family Cucurbitaceae of pantropical cultivation, probably originating in tropical Asia. It produces long, ribbed, herbaceous stems that climb by branched tendrils and may reach 10 m or more in a single growing season. The leaves are large, palmately five- to seven-lobed, rough to the touch and alternately arranged. The plant is monoecious, with bright yellow, five-petalled flowers; staminate flowers are borne in axillary racemes, while pistillate flowers are solitary. The fruit is an elongate, cylindrical, smooth-skinned gourd up to 60 cm long that is eaten as a vegetable when young. As the fruit matures and dries on the vine, the flesh disintegrates to leave a tough, fibrous vascular skeleton enclosing the seeds; this dried, fibrous network is the familiar luffa sponge and is also the part used medicinally in traditional Chinese medicine as Si Gua Luo.