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Look for wild cucumber on river bottoms, swamps and roadside ditches
Outdoors Columnist One thing I like about the changing seasons is that they provide an opportunity to see the landscape in a new light. The silhouette of bare black branches against a soft pastel sunset, the exposed gently rolling dales and low-land swales, the ability to peek deeper into the woods.
One such recent sighting was the twining tendrils of wild cucumber draping on and over a smattering of shrubs and small trees. Unlike a southern counterpart, the Chinese wisteria, which is obvious and overrunning in all seasons, the vine of the wild cucumber seemingly goes unnoticed except in winter.
However, it's the large, spiny, sandy-colored seedpods that often catch a person's eye and make the wild cucumber memorable. During the summer, the two-inch pod is a pulpy green fruit containing four seeds encased in a four-chambered mesh bag-like structure within the single pod. Each blackish-brown, flattened, spindle-shaped seed is about three-fourths of an inch long. When ripe, the pod bursts open and ejects the seeds. The empty pods cling to the desiccated vines and right now it is the remains of the prickly oval fruit that stand out.
This plant, also known as balsam apple, sports an attractive leaf in summer with five to seven pointed lobes, resembling the leaf of the cultivated cucumber. The stems are vine-like, branched, quite smooth and grooved and may extend up to 25 feet in length.
Clusters of small, pale yellowish-white flowers bloom from June to October. While generally six-petaled, the star-like flowers may also display five or seven petals. The pretty, delicate female and male blossoms are separate but often are borne together. Male flowers form upright clusters or panicles; inconspicuous female flowers occur singly or in pairs. It is the fertilized female flowers that develop into the fleshy, fruits covered with soft spines.
In Minnesota these plants inhabit most of the state with the exception of the northeastern region. A relative, the bur cucumber, is also found in our state growing in woods, along streams and roads, and in shady, damp places.
Years ago an acquaintance told me about his first introduction to this willful weed. When he was a youngster, he recalled asking his dad the name of the plant he had found growing near the lilacs. Learning it was wild cucumber, the boy envisioned a bountiful harvest of tasty cucumbers at summer's end if he nurtured the little plant. Throughout the season he tended to the twisting tendrils. His reward, unfortunately, was not succulent salad cucumbers but rather a prolific plant that almost consumed the lilacs.
ANDREA LEE LAMBRECHT, naturalist and outdoors photographer, can be reached at andreal@umn.edu.
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