Calabash

This article is about the plant. For the town, see Calabash, North Carolina.

The calabash (not to be confused with the calabasa) is a vine grown for its fruit, which can either be harvested young and used as a vegetable or harvested mature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil, or pipe. For this reason, one of the calabash subspecies is known as the bottle gourd. The fresh fruit has a light green smooth skin and a white flesh.

The calabash was one of the first cultivated plants in the Americas, grown not for food but as a container.

The calabash is frequently used in southern Chinese cuisine as either a stir-fry or in a soup. The Chinese name for calabash is hulu (Simplified Chinese: 葫芦; Traditional Chinese: 葫蘆; pinyin: húlu) or huzi (Chinese: 葫子; pinyin: húzi). In Italian cuisine, it is known as cucuzzi.

External links

• Multilingual taxonomic information at the University of Melbourne
• Calabashes used for flotation and to store fish during huge Nigerian fish festival
• Calabashes used for flotation and to store fish during huge Nigerian fish festival