Found in the West Indies and Africa

The Bignonia Family is distinguished for its beautiful flowers, with thousands of magnificent trees, a few yielding edible nuts, despite sometimes having bad odor in the fruit.   

The fruit is round or oval and can get as large as 18" in size.  it is always green and smooth until the fruit is picked and dried.  The shell is thin but hard.   The fruit is filled with a solid  mass of spongy, juicy, white pulp containing a great number of dark-brown 1/4" long seeds.

In Caracas the seeds are used to make a popular confection called "carabobo.   The seed resembles the peanut and sometimes a syrup is made by crushing.

The way of mass-producing the seeds is to build a fire, let the coals burn down, crack a number of CALABASH fruits and roast them in the coals.  Then take out the paste-like cooked pulp, stir it vigorously with water until the seeds sink.   Finally take the seeds and dry, pound into a fine powder, mix with sugar, add a little water and bring to a boil.  This makes a fine syrup.

Mexico has CALABASH trees that grow close to the Pacific Ocean.   The local people use the seeds as a popular "refresco" on special occasions such as birthdays.   The ripe seeds are ground with raw rice and roasted pumpkin seeds, and lemon peel.  Larger pieces are strained out.  The resulting mixture is mixed with sugar, water, and ice and served.

Sausage Tree

The sausage tree is well known in Africa and is also found in Florida.  It has curious sausage-like fruits which are 3-4 inches in diameter and up to 18 inches long.  These hang in singly or in bunches from the trunk.    The flowers often have an unpleasant fragrance.

The seeds are roasted as a famine food in Malawi.

The Midnight Horror

A small tree found in India and throughout southern China over to Malaysia.  It has very large seed pods which are extremely conspicuous wherever the tree grows.  The pods are long and thin, with a diameter of 3 inches and a length of 4 feet.   If you bump into a pod after dark you can get cut, hence the name "midnight horror".

The Candle Tree    This 20 foot Panamanian tree bears white and yellow flowers directly on the trunk.   They grow a dangling yellow fruit that grows to 36 inches long.  The fruit closely resembles a yellow wax candle.