Parts of a Crescentia Flower

• Crescentia alata is a genus of six species of plants in the Bignoniaceae family. The plants present as small trees, called by various names, including calabash tree. Look for the Crescentia alata in its native habitat in the tropics of southern Mexico and Central America. The trees often have multiple stems and rangy, twisting branches with simple, bright-green leaves. The flowers look like slender, limp lilies.

Petals

• The flowers of crescentia plants are unusual to the point of being otherworldly. Two inches long, they have no stem but protrude directly from the branches of the tree, as if someone had glued them there. Each flower has five petals, which are very soft, limp and fused together. The colors are mottled off-shades of brown-gold or yellowish-green.

Stamen

• All flowers have the same basic reproduction equipment, including the male part, called the stamen, and the female part, called the pistil. In the crescentia flower, the four stamens look like antenna arching from between the circle of petals, very like its relative, the trumpet flower. The tip of the stamen that produces pollen is called the anther. It is held up by a slender filament stem. The crescentia flower is pollinated by a specific kind of bat that is attracted to the pollen; in the bat's absence, the tree cannot produce fruit.

Pistil

• The "female" pistil of the crescentia flower presents as a tube coming from the heart of the blossom between the stamen. At the base is the ovary. The tube leading up, called the style, is topped by a sticky surface that traps and holds the pollen. After pollination, the crescentia flower petals fall and the ovary forms lime-green fruit growing directly from the fissured branches. The fruit can grow to the size of a soccer ball. Mayans dry them and use them as bowls.