Here's A Puzzle For You To Solve

I just posted this last night and already I have an answer from both my garden website and one of the comments on my Blog.  'Anonymous" on the garden site and "Slightlylooney" who commented on the Blog said it was a Wild Cucumber; Marah Macrocarpeae.  I looked it up o the internet and "Bingo" that is exactly what it is.  Thank you so much!!  The puzzle is solved after six months of searching for an answer.  Such interesting information on this plant.  It grows from January through April.  I picked the one I had in May.

Would you believe it sometimes has a hundred pound root?

It's also nice to know that people actually do view my Blog.  Thank you, that is very much appreciated!!

Do you have a clue what this plant is?  If you do, please leave a comment.  At the bottom of this posting click on the comment box and type in what you know about the plant.  I would really appreciate it.

I am on a wonderful gardening site and have posted it there also but haven't discovered yet what it is.  Looking forward to your comments!!

In May of 2008 I made a trip to Jamul, CA, a suburb of San Diego, to visit my children and grandchildren.  My three grandchildren and I had gone for a walk and when we returned to the house we were looking at some of the trees growing by the patio when I discovered a vine growing through the tree that had the pod, in the picture above, hanging from it.  I had never seen anything like it before.  We picked it and waited until mom and dad came home to ask them what it was.  They didn't know either.

So I brought the pod home with me and immediately took these pictures of it.  I searched the internet for a clue, choosing different subjects; California plants, pods, spiny pods, gourds etc.  I didn't find anything that looked like it.  Jamul is in the hill country about forty minutes from downtown San Diego.  It is very dry and gets hot.

The pod measured four inches long by three inches wide.  The spines were very pointy and bent in different directions.  You could handle it, they weren't extremely sticky.

I placed the pod on the buffet and pretty much forgot about it.  A week later when I was cleaning I found that the bottom end, opposite the stem, had burst open.  The inside, as you can see, was white, soft and moist.  There were four chambers with beige colored seeds in each chamber.  The seeds were smooth and shiny and had a little darker brown on one end.  Altogether there were 12 seeds.

I imagine when they burst while hanging on the vine, the seeds would drop to the ground, into the dead foliage, dirt, etc. that is under the tree, sprout and grow.  I tried placing them in a pot on top of dirt and covering them with leaves.  I placed the pot in the direct sun but nothing happened.  I'm sure that Pacific Northwest weather is not even close to the heat they have in Jamul.  I was a little disappointed they didn't do anything.