Chayote squash, Sechium edule. A wonderful vegetable, if you have a warm climate, and space for the long vines to climb. I grew it in San Diego & San Jose, but it requires too long a season to grow it here. It is a perennial, and if killed by frost, it will sprout back when the weather warms. Give it a big trellis, or a tall fence to climb on; I built a horizontal trellis 10' X 20', and once the vines reached that height, they covered it completely. It is not uncommon to get 50-75 squashes per vine, after a couple years.

I could give you more cultural advice, if you are interested.

It's a vigorous and productive vine. The fruit however is very bland, rather like a very soft zucchini when cooked.

The flavor to me is somewhere between zucchini and melon. The wonderful thing about growing your own is that you have control over the level of ripeness... more mature is sweeter. The cooked texture is somewhat like turnip or rutabaga. We love it in soups or stir fries. It stores on a shelf for months, so when we grew our own, we also ate it alone as a vegetable... long after the zucchini had died. It should not be refrigerated, the skin is damaged by cold, vastly reducing its storage life.

Chayote is grown in many tropical & sub-tropical parts of the world. You can find a lot of suggestions & recipes if you look it up by some of its other names, such as mirliton, choko, or any one of the Oriental & Asian names (see the Wiki entry). It is really good in soups & stews. Other parts of the plant are edible too; I've eaten the young vine tips, and the seed - which is like a giant pumpkin seed. The tuberous roots are supposed to be edible too, but I never felt like sacrificing a plant to try that.

Chayote grown from seed may be different in appearance from what was planted. I've planted smooth fruit, and had the plant revert to squash with the spiny appearance of the photo above. The fruit from those vines was much larger than those sold in stores... I hated leaving those plants behind when I moved.

I should mention that for most of the year, the vines grow & branch heavily - without flowering. The vines are incredibly vigorous climbers, they will climb & cover a small tree if allowed to. The plants are photo-period sensitive, and will only bloom when day length approaches 12 hours (the Autumnal equinox). At that point, flowers will appear in every new leaf node; one female flower, and a cluster of tiny male flowers. The flowers require pollination by bees or other insects to set fruit. It amazed me that as tiny as the flowers were, the bees really seemed to like them.

Part of my childhood.

Growing over the chook pen ( chicken run) :) Here in Australia called Choko. If eat young can eat skin n all. Older and the skin tough n sticky. Steamed mashed or baked. With butter. Or use to bulk out or substitute for apples in a pie etc.

In Louisiana they call it Mirleton (Not sure of the spelling) and make stuffed Mirletons. So good.