any of you terrestrial plant folks know what this is???

[Magnum Man]

I call it wild cucumber... I don't eat it, but the sheep do, and it pretty much takes over the woods around here by late summer ( Minnesota )

unlike more woody grape vines this is a soft plant, that dies back every year, and grows new, every spring, from one of the few apple / water melon seed size seeds in the pod

 

[Magnum Man]

the pod opens on one end, kind of a star pattern, and the pods look more like a luffa sponge, under the outer skin, by late summer

 

[Magnum Man]

apparently I'm not the only one that calls it a wild cucumber...

Wild Cucumber, <em>Echinocystis lobata</em>

Have you noticed white-flowering vines engulfing trees or shrubs, particularly in more rural areas, lately? Wild cucumber is a warm season annual that becomes quite conspicuous in late summer at the peak of its growth and bloom. Although it is in the same family as cultivated cucumber, this...

hort.extension.wisc.edu

 

[Colin_T]

It's probably not well known due to being inedible and a potential weed that strangles/ smothers other plants. You could grow it for your sheep if they can eat it but apart from that, I would get rid of it. You can grow other plants for your sheep too. Most animals like variety and anything safe would be a bonus when living on grass.

We used to have pig melons around here back in the day when we were growing up. I don't know if they were native to Australia or introduced but they looked like a small round water melon (6-8 inches diameter) and had white crisp crunchy flesh with lots of seeds. We never ate them and I don't know if they are edible or toxic, but we used to get the baby melons (around 1 inch diameter) and leave them out in the sun for a few days. Then chuck them at cars going past (people shouldn't do that because it's wrong). When they hit something they exploded and left a splat mark that looked like a bird poop, which is why we did it (small minds think little things like that are funny). We stopped doing it after a car stopped and 3 guys got out and chased us down the road

 

[GaryE]

I'm going to follow - I have seen that well west of where I am now, although I've never done more than pass through an area where it was common.