Crossword-Solution: CUCURBITA 9 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 15

Cucurbites: retorts; distilling-vessels; so called from their likeness in shape to a gourd — Latin, “cucurbita.” Alembikes:stills, limbecs.

The tendrils of _Bryonia dioica_, _Cucurbita ovifera_, and _Cucumis sativa_ are sensitive and revolve.

Sachs himself admits {181} that “if the growth which takes place in the entire tendril at the time of contact with a support is small, a considerable acceleration occurs on the convex surface, but in general there is no elongation on the concave surface, or there may even be a _contraction_; in the case of a tendril of Cucurbita this contraction amounted to nearly one-third of the original length.” In a subsequent passage Sachs seems to feel some difficulty in accounting for this kind of contraction.

With respect to the abortion of tendrils, certain cultivated varieties of _Cucurbita pepo_ have, according to Naudin, {200} either quite lost these organs or bear semi-monstrous representatives of them.

Such a structure was quite new to me, and Bower and I were disposed to see in it a representative of the foot in Selaginella, when I saw the account of Flahault's 'peg.'" Flahault, it should be explained, was the discoverer of the curious peg in Cucurbita.