Cucumis melo is a tropical, annual vine that has been cultivated and hybridised into many varieties, including well known smooth skinned varieties like honeydew and casaba, along with cantaloupes.
Honeydews are usually round or oval with a smooth skin that can vary in colour from yellow to white and grey. The flesh colour is generally greenish, moist and sweet and has thick rows of seeds in the centre.
Cantaloupes tend to be rougher skinned with sweet, orange flesh.
Melons grow as spreading stems that cling to anything they touch via springy tendrils. Their large, lobed leaves are coarse, hairy and medium to deep green in colour.
Attractive yellow, funnel-shaped flowers appear when the vines reach maturity, but the flowers are monoecious which means that separate male and female yellow flowers appear on each vine.
The pollen producing male flowers open first, soon followed by the female flowers which produce the melons.
Each female flower must be pollinated by bees for the fruit to set, so be sure to encourage these productive insects in your garden.
They take an average of 90 to 110 days to produce harvestable fruit.