Bottle Gourd

APPEARANCE: The bottle gourd species produces fruit in a remarkable spectrum of shape and size, but the skin is the same: smooth, tough, and most commonly light green. Two marketed versions are:

Wu lo gwa: Illustrated below.

Po gwa: Long and thin, straight or curved, and generally 12 to 30 inches long.

QUALITY: As with other vegetable melons, select smaller younger ones in the expectation that they will be more tender and sweeter.

GENERAL COMMENTS: Tighter than a sealed drum, more durable than a plastic bag, cheaper than tupperware, this gourd is believed to have floated from Africa, its native home, to South America, where it was growing by 7000 to 5000 B.C. Later varieties, perhaps even more seaworthy, eventually reached Asia, where they have been grown and eaten or dried and used as receptacles ever since. Indeed, in China, the wu lo gwa is legendary. Ancient art inevitably portrays sages and monks with a gourd or two dangling from their belts, transporting water or herbs. The term wu lo has no other meaning than to describe the shape of this particular vegetable.