alexpgp | Luffa?!

Quite some time ago, I was walking the dogs on the other side of Kirby Boulevard when my eye was attracted to a long, wispy item that, upon closer examination, turned out to be the fibrous substructure that is left after all the rest of a luffa has gone away. Said substructure is often used as a sort of sponge/washcloth, and they are quite useful and resilient.

My eye scanned the immediate area for any other luffa "skeletons," either on the ground or hanging from a vine, but none turned up.

Then a couple of months ago, once the trees on our side of Kirby lost their leaves, I was walking the dogs when I noticed some old luffas hanging from a tree on the Kirby side of the concrete noise barrier that runs past our and our neighbor's house. Our neighbor, who hails from South Asia, is a diehard gardener, and I had no doubt that the luffas were his.

When one of the luffas fell on the ground, I took it apart. The "skeleton" had actually deteriorated due to factors that included mold, but when I tried to germinate some of the seeds, nothing came up. I've since picked up other fallen luffas, to see if any had useful sponges.

As it turns out, some seeds fell onto the patio concrete as I removed the overly dry skin of one of those luffas, and apparently a few seeds lodged into the expansion crack between the slab and the patio. I say this because two days ago, as I surveyed the various little weedlets that keep springing up in such expansion cracks, I noticed an anomaly: there were two plants that looked like cucumber seedlings.

As luffas belong to the cucumber family, I concluded that a couple of the seeds had germinated and I proceeded to carefully extract the seedlings from their confinement and replant them in something a bit more roomy. I frankly didn't expect either plant to survive the transplantation shock, but here we are, two days later, and after an exhibit of slight puniness yesterday, the seedlings looked hale and hearty (and bigger!) this afternoon.