An annual plant, hispid and scabrous, with a procumbent stem and branching tendrils. Its leaves are large, cordate, palmately 5-lobed, or angled and denticulate. The flowers are yellow large, axillary, and the males long-pedunculate. Corolla campanulate; the petals united and coherent with the calyx. The calyx of the male flowers is 5-toothed; of the female the same, the upper part being deciduous after flowering; the stigmas are 3, thick, and 2-lobed; the pepo, or fruit, subligneous, very large, roundish, or oblong, smooth, yellow when ripe, furrowed and torulose, containing yellowish seeds.

Anthelmintic; antiparasitic, diuretic (seeds)

Oilseed Pumpkin
Plants for a Future
King's American Dispensatory

Ascorbic acid, beta-carotene, beta-sitosterol, caffeic acid, ferulic acid, kaempferol, linoleic, oleic acid, quercetin.

Oil constituents of pumpkin seed combined with saw palmetto treated an enlarged prostate gland effectively. The leaves are applied externally to burns.

Sharma PV. Classical Uses of Medicinal Plants.