Kalahari desert melons

Once again I crossed the southern tip of the Kalahari Desert on my way to Springbok and this time I saw some wild melons by the side of the road. A friend who lives around here tells me that they get as big as watermelons which is not surprising since they are meant to be related to watermelons.

They are called tsammas, but it seems to me that a all bunch of kalahari melons are called tsammas so it may not be a very precise name.

Regardless of whether or not they are the tsammas related to watermelons, some tsammas are and in fact watermelons are native to this part of the world. They are the water storage equivalent to cacti in North America and in fact some Kalahari people claim that it would have been impossible to cross the Kahalari without tsammas. Note that most species included into the name tsamma are in fact quite bitter.

The one I saw where quite small.

The leaves are very small, thick and very leathery.

They ran along a thin wine pretty hard to see, in fact it looked dead in parts.

One of them had already been eaten by some animal rather.

You can see how the melons stand out.

This website has some interesting information.

ADDED MUCH LATER (after buying a book about South African wild flowers at the 2nd hand bookstore): The latin name of the tsammas is Acanthosicyos naudiana and they belong to the Cucurbitaceae Family.