Duration: Annual

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Vine

General: Annual climbing vines, stems slender, with branching tendrils.

Leaves: Alternate, angular to deeply cleft with rounded lobes, the spaces between the lobes usually closed.

Flowers: White to pale yellow, corollas rotate with 5 lobes, calyx with 5 more or less united sepals, stamens 2-5, filaments united into a column, pistillate flowers clustered at the end of a peduncle in the same axil as the longer staminate peduncle and forming a capitate cluster.

Fruits: Small spiny, ovoid fruits 6-7 mm long, not fleshy, borne in a capitate cluster, spines slender, minutely barbed, deciduous.

Ecology: Found along streams, from 4,000-5,500 ft (1219-1676 m); flowering August-September.

Distribution: Arizona, New Mexico.

Notes: Although S. laciniatus var. subinteger is a synonym for this species, S. ampelophyllus is considered a separate species from S. laciniatus. Look to the fruits with small, deciduous spines to help identify the genus, and the lobes of the leaves to help identify the species; S. ampelophyllus has lobes that are shallow, not cleft to the middle, with broadly triangular lobes; S. laciniatus has leaves cleft to the middle or deeper, the lobes oblong.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Unknown

Synonyms: Sicyos laciniatus var. subinteger

Editor: LCrumbacher 2011