Pair of blooming Momordica rostrata

This species is dioecious and these are pictures of a male and a female, the male having many more flowers.

One year ago these were both seedlings with a caudex about .5" wide but I put them outside in a raised bed where they multiplied in size very quickly and even flowered in late summer. One of the plants turned out to be female, which is lucky since only about 10% of these plants are female. I got a couple fruit from it and some seeds.

Winters here are too cold for this plant so I dug them up around October and trimmed their roots to put them into pots. The female had a huge taproot that went 2 feet down to the bottom of the raised bed and then a further 1 foot into the clay underneath. The end of the root was actually just beginning to rot when I got it out.

They spent the entire winter in a cool dark place with no water and I was planning to leave them there until after last frost, but we had a very warm March and they started growing aggressively so I gave in and put them under grow lights where they started blooming again. These pictures were taken in the last few days.

I grew other succulent cucurbits (I think I have 9 or 10 species) in the same bed and got similar results. These plants do very well with plenty of room to grow and regular watering. I usually made sure they got water at least twice a week when they were outdoors.