In the back yard, in Houston, Texas, we found this enormous vine growing. It’s been approximately 3 months, and the thing has spread over a gigantic area, including covering the top of this palm tree.
The vine is making these strange fruits - they look like cucumbers, except they are about 3 inches long, and they turn red when ripe. I’m linking a photo of the fruits here.
If you cut into the fruits, they smell vaguely like a cucumber, but I have not yet dared to taste one yet.
Well if smells/tastes like cucumber… I can find reference to yellow cucumber, which looks SO similar…
There are poisonous members of the melon family, eg
diplocyclos . It even has the smooth striped skin turning red… But the fruit is spherical when mature, and the insides of the fruit are very different.
I wonder if diplocyclos can hybridize with a cucumber cultivar… That would make poisonous red cucumber.
I just read about the coccinia grandis and if that’s what it is you need to read up on controlling or eliminating it. It sure looks like it from the pictures. Sounds a lot like kudzu (covers trees and other vegetation and kills it). Pretty fruit, though.