Notes in Japanese katakana? The original text contains Japanese phonetic characters (ノ, ラ) alongside Chinese characters, which were likely used by a Japanese scholar or printer to guide pronunciation or provide cross-references.

Water Gourd

original: 水壺盧 (shui hulu). This is a variety of the Bottle Gourd or Calabash (Lagenaria siceraria), so named because of its historical use as a buoyant vessel for carrying water or as a flotation device.

Section Marker original: 乚. This character often served as a structural marker in early printing to indicate a break or a specific sub-entry. Vegetables: Volume 16 original: 蔬類卷之十六 (shulei juan zhi shiliu). The Compendium of Materia Medica organizes plants by type; the "Vegetable" category includes plants that are cultivated for the table as well as for medicine.

[A detailed woodcut illustration of a water gourd is centered on the page. The fruit is large and pear-shaped, hanging among broad, deeply veined leaves and delicate, curling tendrils. The artist has used fine lines to depict the smooth, hard skin of the gourd, which distinguishes it from the textured "Nested Melon" of the previous entry.]

The Water Gourd was highly valued in pre-modern East Asia. Beyond its use as a vegetable when young, the dried, hardened shell of the mature fruit was indispensable for making ladles, storage jars, and even medicine bottles—a practice that gave rise to the phrase "What medicine is in your gourd?" to mean "What are your intentions?"