Rudy Mancke helps a listener determine if a vine is a cayaponia or a creeping cucumber.
Transcript (edited for clarity):
RUDY MANCKE:
Hi, this is Rudy Mancke from USC for NatureNotes.
Charles in the Cayce area had found a vine and wondered what it was. He had gone to Albert E. Radford's book, "Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas" — which is a great book — and he had identified it as something called cayaponia, and wondered if it was correct.
And when he sent me the pictures, it just didn't look right to me. I thought it was creeping cucumber. Melothria is the genus name. The leaves look alike. Flowers look a little alike. But the fruit is very, very different. That's always frustrating when you don't have the part that's going to seal the ID. The fruit of creeping cucumber is sort of green and black, and the fruit of cayaponia is red.
This one was green and black. We solved the detective problem. We figured it out.
