↑ The plant name "Luffa" was introduced to Western botany nomenclature by the botanist Johann Vesling (died 1649), who visited Egypt in the late 1620s and described the plant under cultivation with artificial irrigation in Egypt. In 1706 the botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort introduced the formal botany genus name "Luffa". Tournefort referred to Veslingius's earlier description and reiterated that "Luffa Arabum" is a plant from Egypt in the cucumber family. In establishing the Luffa genus, Tournefort identified just one member species and called it "Luffa Arabum". His 1706 article includes detailed drawings of this species (which is now called Luffa aegyptiaca) – Ref. The species is native to tropical Asia but has been under cultivation in Egypt since late medieval times. The botanist Peter Forsskål visited Egypt in the early 1760s and noted that it was called لوف lūf in Arabic – Ref. In the 18th century the botanist Linnaeus adopted the name luffa for this species but assigned it to the Momordica genus, and did not use a separate Luffa genus. More refs on Luffa in 18th century botany nomenclature: "A commentary on Loureiro's "Flora Cochinchinensis" ", by E.D. Merrill, year 1935, in Transactions of American Philosophical Society volume 24 part 2, page 377-378. Luffa @ ATILF and "Suite de l'Etablissement de Quelques Nouveaux Genres de Plantes", by J.P. de Tournefort (1706) in Mémoires de l'Academe Royale des Sciences année 1706.
