Medicinal Monday Buffalo Gourd

Cucurbita foetidissima is a gourd that is native to North America and can be found in the central and southwestern areas of the United States. Native American communities in this area have used this gourd for food as well as for traditional medicinal purposes. 

About Buffalo Gourd

This plant is in the Cucurbitaceae or cucumber family. It has large gray-green triangular leaves that can grow up to 12 inches long and are covered with rough hair. The leaves grow alongside stems that lie on the ground. The plant sprawls up to 30 feet across. The flowers are yellow with stamens that have large antlers deep inside the bell-shaped throat of the flowers. The fruit of this plant is green-striped when young. They turn yellow as they mature and grow to the size of a tennis ball.

Medicinal Uses

One of the most common traditional uses was to make tea to ease childbirth. Another was to make tea from the boiled roots to induce vomiting. The seeds were ground into a powder to relieve swellings and the dried root was mixed with water and used as a laxative. Many used the root as a soap and the gourds for washing. Many communities pulverized the seeds or made a decoction of the roots to treat venereal sores. Specifically, the Apache and the Coahuilla made a poultice of the leaves, stems, and roots and applied the mixture to sores on horses.  The Shoshoni made an infusion of the entire plant and gave it to their horses to get rid of worms. The Cahuilia found three interesting traditional uses for this plant. They ground the shell of the fruit and used it as a shampoo, they applied the pulp of the fruit mixed with chopped-up roots on open sores and made physic from dried roots. The Keres and Zuni made a poultice of crushed roots and applied the mixture to boils and sores, the Kiowa took a decoction of peeled roots as an emetic, the Omaha pulverized the root and took it for pain, and the Paiute made a decoction of the root to kill maggots in wounds.  The roots are boiled and used for chest pain by Isleta-Pueblo Indians.

In addition to medicinal uses, the seeds were roasted and eaten as food or ground and made into flour. The dried gourds were made into rattles and ladles. The yellow flowers were used as a dye.

Did You Know...

Other names for Buffalo Gourd are Stinking Gourd, Missouri Gourd, Stink Gourd, and Wild Gourd.

This plant gets its nickname Stink Gourd because of its foul odor when bruised.

The mature fruit is poisonous to humans depending on weight and susceptibility to the poison.

Cucurbita is Latin for the word gourd and the species name, foetidissima comes from Latin meaning very bad smelling.

A mature gourd can clean wooden floors.

A soap-like foam forms when the fruit of the gourd is crushed in water because of the saponin glycosides and is used on laundry stains.