True choko doesn't trouble environment or taste buds

The choko (or chayote, the Nahuatl name from Latin America, and dozens of other local names in Mexico) is a gourd. Things we call gourds are the fruit of various species in the cucumber family: water melons, pumpkins, marrows, zucchinis and, well, gourds. Oh and cucumbers.   

The choko's botanical name, Sechium edule, tells us its like a cucumber  ('sechium' is perhaps a corruption of an Ancient Greek word for cucumber, or else based on a local Indonesian or Malaysian name for the plant and its fruit...) and reputedly edible. I'm not going to debate the edibility of a choko, but let's just say it's not toxic to humans. While the fruit - the gourd - is the part usually eaten, by some, so too are the stems, young leaves and sweet-potato-like tuber. 

The genus Sechium has eleven species, all from Mexico and Central America. Two of them - including the choko, first described scientifically from Jamaica - are known mostly from cultivation although Sechium edule is thought to still grow naturally in southern Mexico.

Although vigorous and easy to grow, choko should not become weedy. Unlike, and not to be confused with, the False Choko or Moth Vine, Araujia sericifera, which is not only a rampant weed but also toxic - it's in the milk-sapped Apocynaceae family, of which one ought always be wary. I've written previously about another rather unsavoury trait of what is also called the Cruel Vine.

The true choko fruit, illustrated here, is firm and light green, with a single seed; the moth vine fruit soft and furry, with many seeds. The Moth Vine also has a much larger, soft pink flower, more like that of a frangipanni - which is also in the same plant family.  Our gourd, has small white or greenish flowers, typical of the cucumber family. It's typical of the family in all kinds of other ways too.

Most Cucurbitaceae are vigorous vines with long-stalked leaves, attaching to supporting structures with coiled 'tendrils'.  The flowers are - like your pumpkin and zucchini - either male or female, not both. In the choko both kinds of flowers are clustered together.

All flowers have five petals and five of the green outer flaps, called sepals. Male flowers have five pollen-bearing anthers and the female flowers have usually three ovaries. The female flowers of the choko have an umbrella-lke yellow landing pad (and receptive area) for the pollen. You can see this below, with the young goard below the other flower parts. 

Female flower

Lots of insects will pollinate choko flowers so fruit-set is usually not a problem. My pictures were taken of a plant draped over a school fence in May this year. Because a variety of insects will visit and pollinate choko flowers, fruit-set is usually not a problem. (Or if you have a local hummingbird, that will do the trick.)

Female flower

And so, to the fruit. It's described as bland and marrow-like, but also like 'cooked cucumbers or mild apples'. Perhaps the best that can be said of it, and is, is that the choko 'takes on the flavours of other ingredients used in a dish'. High praise.

Postscript (18 July 2022): After publishing this post, and being a little rude about chokos on social media, I remembered I've been in this contested space before. Last time I gave chokos a hard time I got the following feedback - on Facebook I think. I've removed the names to protect the living and the dead:

• They can have them
• *Shudder*
• The new leaves are an excellent vegetable. Better that silver beat, spinach. And anything is better than kale. ;)
• I had a lovely delicate coconut curry of its shoots as part of a meal in the mountains near Lae, when [a colleague] and I were chasing Winteraceae (and Cyperaceae). All parts of the plant are edible. Though I guess eating the tuberous roots is less sustainable
• Love them
• My grandparents grew them & I always though they only provided bulk & flavour enhancement. They boiled the hell out of everything, so this isn't a fair concept of what this fruit can achieve culnary-wise.
• Always thought of it as a staple that wanted to be a green. Or vice versa.
• I rediscovered them in Mauritius, they stir fry with lots of butter, salt, onion (actually red eschallot), garlic, ginger and thyme.
• My mother would pressure cook them first. Very delicious.
• Sechium edule, chou chou in Mauritian creole
• The more widespread common name is chayote. Cucurbitaceae with one seed! Did I mention it was a cultigen? Record of where it is native is lost and known only as a cultivated or naturalised plant.
• My grandparents had them on their farm outside Menangle Park. They were shade plants that grew fruit that were fun to throw at the birds in the grapes 😁