Alsomitra macrocarpa

Alsomitra macrocarpa ("grove mitre/fillet" and "large-fruited") or the Javan cucumber is a gourd-bearing liana, belonging to the pumpkin family (Cucurbitaceae) from the tropical Asian forests of the Malay Archipelago and the Indonesian islands. Alsomitra is a genus of 34 species of vines found in Southeast Asia, Australia and South America.

The fruits or pepos are football-sized (about 300mm diameter) and bell-shaped, suspended high in the forest canopy, and are densely packed with large numbers of seeds. Remarkably the seeds have large, papery wings and when ripe they fall from the underside of the fruit and glide long distances.

The plant was first described under the name Zanonia macrocarpa in 1825 by Carl Ludwig Blume from fruiting material collected on Mount Parang in Java. In 1843 Max Joseph Roemer published it under the name Alsomitra macrocarpa, including 7 other ill-fitting species in the genus, a genus he did not define. In 1881 Alfred Cogniaux allocated the species to Macrozanonia macrocarpa. The current accepted name is Roemer's Alsomitra macrocarpa.