Fivelobe Cucumber
Cayaponia quinqueloba
Found in swamp forests, river banks, hammocks. FloraQuest, phone app (app page) What its natural habitat tells you
Native to Florida. How scores work Is it native here?
Profile 59%
- Light
- Partial shade, Full shade, Full sun
- Soil moisture
- Dry to wet
No photograph yet. Looking for an old drawing…
Rare or protected plant. Specialist conservation planting; excluded from routine garden suggestions. Plant caution source
Hidden from default planting suggestions. Wildlife value and native status remain unchanged.
At a glance
- Life cycle
- Annual or perennial
- Bloom
- June to November
Not yet recorded · Height · Spread · Leaves
Height: NC species account not read yet.
Spread and leaves: no source found yet.
This plant is missing most of its facts, so Quercus is looking them up in old botany books.
Recorded in 5 Florida counties.
Natural habitats
Places it grows wild. Not a planting requirement. Each habitat page lists the plants and wildlife also found there.

Streams, rivers and their banks
Flowing water and its banks, bars and rocky shoals.
Dense, evergreen groves of live oak, magnolia and other hardwoods in the southern Coastal Plain, from dry oak domes to wet hydric hammocks and south Florida's tropical hammocks; salt-shaped maritime hammocks are maritime forests.
Who uses this plant?
No records yet · Ants · Beetles · Flies · Adult butterflies / moths · Other wasps · Other insects
Plant details
- Family
- Cucurbitaceae
- Flower color
- White, yellow or green
Growing sources and scope
- Bloom · “June to November” · FloraQuest: Carolinas, Georgia (Southeastern Flora Team), phone app (app page) · Carolinas and Georgia
- Flower color · “White, yellow or green” · Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
- Life cycle · “Annual or perennial” · Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
- Light · “Partial shade; Full shade; Full sun (documented habitat)” · FloraQuest: Carolinas, Georgia (Southeastern Flora Team), phone app (app page) · Carolinas and Georgia
- Soil · “Dry; Moist; Wet (documented habitat)” · FloraQuest: Carolinas, Georgia (Southeastern Flora Team), phone app (app page) · Carolinas and Georgia
Also known as
Cayaponia boykinii; Five Lobe Cucumber; Melonleaf
Conservation status
| Florida rank | S2S3 |
|---|---|
| Global rank | G4 |
| FL status | Not verified |
| Federal status | Not verified |
Will it fit your yard?
Check this plant against your county, sun and soil moisture. Conditions are checked in your browser.
Sources
- Atlas of Florida Plants
- USDA PLANTS
- Vascular Plants of North Carolina (NC Natural Heritage Program)
- NatureServe Explorer
- Shropshire & Tallamy 2025, Lepidoptera of North America north of Mexico, ZooKeys 1261 (ODbL)
- Noori, Seltmann & Orr 2026, A curated and integrated dataset for exploring global bee-plant interactions (GloBI), Zenodo, CC BY 4.0
- Smith, Bachelder, Russell, Morales, Mosher & Seltmann 2024, Bee-Specialization-Modeling v0.6.1 (specialist host table compiled from J. Fowler's pollen specialist bee lists), Zenodo, CC BY 4.0
- Hurlbert, Olsen, Sawyer & Winner 2021, Avian Diet Database, Scientific Data 8: 260 (CC0)
- Narango, Tallamy & Shropshire 2020, Few keystone plant genera support the majority of Lepidoptera species, Nature Communications

