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Benincasa fistulosa; photograph Fructibus, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons CC0Fructibus, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Benincasa fistulosa (Stocks) H.Schaef. & S.S.Renner

Round gourd; Round-melon; Squash-melon

Cucurbitaceae · India, Pakistan

No habitat climate
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Benincasa fistulosa, photograph Fructibus, CC0, via Wikimedia CommonsBenincasa fistulosa, photograph Fructibus, CC0, via Wikimedia CommonsBenincasa fistulosa, photograph Fructibus, CC0, via Wikimedia CommonsBenincasa fistulosa, photograph Fructibus, CC0, via Wikimedia CommonsBenincasa fistulosa, photograph Fructibus, CC0, via Wikimedia CommonsBenincasa fistulosa, photograph Fructibus, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons 12 photographs ›

Summary

Benincasa fistulosa, commonly known as tinda, also called Indian squash, round melon, Indian round gourd, apple gourd or Indian baby pumpkin, is a squash-like cucurbit grown for its immature fruit, a vegetable especially popular in South Asia.

Quoted from Wikipedia, "Tinda", CC BY-SA 4.0.

About the genus · Benincasa

Benincasa is a genus of flowering plants in the cucumber family, Cucurbitaceae. It includes two species native to Indomalaya and Australasia:Benincasa fistulosa (Stocks) H.Schaef. & S.S.Renner – tinda Benincasa hispida (Thunb.) Cogn. – wax gourd

Quoted from Wikipedia, "Benincasa", CC BY-SA 4.0.

Cultivation

Nothing derived: no habitat climate for this species.

Climate across the habitat

No habitat climate can be derived: Only 1 distinct land cell of the climate grid holds an in-range record placed to within 10 km; three are needed for an envelope.

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP.
No openly licensed record to show inside the range.
NativeIndia, Pakistan · introduced: Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Afghanistan, West Himalaya, Thailand · regions are the level-3 units of the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, as Kew's World Checklist records ranges, some under historical names such as Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia (how).
Kew's description“climbing annual” · “seasonally dry tropical” · quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here
Evidence usedThe map marker rests on the one georeferenced record inside the native range; none carries a licence permitting republication, so the map shows no points. 1 record outside the WCVP native range not used. Under a dozen records behind the map. No climate across the range is derived for this species.

Photographs

Benincasa fistulosa, photograph 1did not loadBenincasa fistulosa, photograph 2did not loadBenincasa fistulosa, photograph 3did not loadBenincasa fistulosa, photograph 4did not loadBenincasa fistulosa, photograph 5did not loadBenincasa fistulosa, photograph 6did not load

Photographs: Fructibus, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (6).

Other Benincasa 1 in the reference

Benincasa hispida Benincasa hispida Wax gourd Photo: CC BY, Satyaji Wibowo

Names & registers

Also known as Citrullus fistulosus; Citrullus lanatus var. fistulosus; Citrullus vulgaris var. fistulosus; Colocynthis citrullus var. fistulosus; Praecitrullus fistulosus. (GBIF Backbone)

GBIFPOWOIPNIWFOWikidataWikipedia

The record

Family
Cucurbitaceae
Described by
(Stocks) H.Schaef. & S.S.Renner
Native to
India, Pakistan
Wild records
1 in range · 0 open

Every figure here is derived from public data by a stated rule and names its source; nothing about this species is written for its page by a person or by AI, apart from the marked, credited quotations. How →

Where this page came from built 2026-10-21
GBIF species record gbif.species answeredasked 2026-10-21
GBIF synonyms gbif.synonyms answeredasked 2026-10-21
GBIF common names gbif.vernacular answeredasked 2026-10-21names fetched 2026-10-21
WCVP native range wcvp.distribution answeredas of 2026-06-04
GBIF occurrence records gbif.occurrences answeredas of 2026-10-21GBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.hbdw64, of 2026-10-21
Habitat climate climate nothing to reportasked 2026-10-21only 1 distinct land cell of the climate grid holds an in-range record placed to within 10 km; three are needed for an envelope
Wikidata wikidata answeredasked 2026-10-21
Wikipedia wikipedia answeredasked 2026-10-21Wikipedia redirects Benincasa fistulosa to Tinda, whose Wikidata item (Q282148) is the taxon Praecitrullus fistulosus, an older name of this species (Praecitrullus fistulosus)
iNaturalist taxon inat.taxon not asked
iNaturalist photographs, wild inat.photos.wild not asked
iNaturalist photographs, cultivated inat.photos.cultivated not asked
GBIF media gbif.media nothing to reportasked 2026-10-21
Wikimedia Commons commons answeredasked 2026-10-21
OpenAlex papers openalex not askednot yet asked for this reference; a later fill takes the papers from OpenAlex's snapshot

Every source is recorded as having answered, reported nothing, refused, failed, not been asked, or answered twice where one answer is taken (“not taken: two items answered”), and, for a source asked when this page was built, when: the figures are as the source held them that day; a source read from a file (Kew's World Checklist, a GBIF download) says "as of" the file's day instead; a row carried from an earlier build of the page names that build instead. Only “nothing to report” is ever shown as an absence. Records came from 2 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.

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