cucumber

The cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is in the gourd family Cucurbitaceae, which includes squash, and in the same genus as the muskmelon. The plant is widely cultivated today.

The cucumber plant has large leaves that form a canopy over the fruit. The vine is grown on the ground or on trellises, often in greenhouses.

The fruit is roughly cylindrical, elongated, with tapered ends, and may be as large as 60 cm long and 10 cm in diameter. Cucumbers grown to be eaten fresh (called slicers) and those intended for pickling (called picklers) are similar.

The fruit is commonly harvested while still green, though generally after the fruits outgrow their spines. They are eaten as a vegetable, either raw, cooked, or made into pickled cucumbers. Although less nutritious than most fruit, the fresh cucumber is still a very good source of vitamin C, vitamin K, and potassium, and also provides some dietary fiber, vitamin A, vitamin B6, thiamin, folate, pantothenic acid, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, copper, and manganese.^{citation needed]} The pickling process removes or degrades much of the nutrient content, especially that of vitamin C.

Pickling cucumbers are sometimes sold fresh as "Kirby" or "Liberty" cucumbers. They are 3-6 inches long (7.5-15 cm). They are often irregularly-shaped, and have bumpy skin with tiny white- or black-dotted spines. They are never waxed. They can vary from creamy yellow to pale or dark green.

English cucumbers can grow as long as 2 feet. They are (nearly) seedless, and are sometimes marketed as "Burpless," as the seeds give some people gas.

Japanese cucumbers are slender and deep green. They are mild, and have a bumpy, ridged skin. They can be used for slicing, salads, pickling, etc., and are available year-round.

Slicers grown commercially for the North American market are generally longer, smoother, more uniform in color, and have a tougher skin. Slicers in other countries are smaller and have a thinner, more delicate skin. Picklers are generally shorter and thicker.

Flowering and pollination

A few varieties of cucumber are parthenocarpic, the blossoms creating seedless fruit without pollination. Pollination for these varieties degrades the quality. In the US, these are usually grown in greenhouses, where bees are excluded. In Europe, they are grown outdoors in some regions, and bees are excluded from these areas. Most cucumber varieties, however, are seeded and require pollination. Thousands of hives of bees are annually carried to cucumber fields just before bloom for this purpose. Cucumbers may also be pollinated by flies.

Symptoms of inadequate pollination include fruit abortion and misshapen fruit. Partially pollinated flowers may develop fruit which are green and develop normally near the stem end, but pale yellow and withered at the blossom end.

Traditional varieties produce male blossoms first, then female, in about equivalent numbers. New gynoecious hybrid cultivars produce almost all female blossoms. However, since these varieties do not provide pollen, they must have interplanted a pollenizer variety and the number of beehives per unit area is increased. Insecticide applications for insect pests must be done very carefully to avoid killing off the insect pollinators.

It is claimed that the seeds can cause some people to burp, though there are also references to this being caused by bitterness of the skin. Seedless varieties are available.

Cucumbers are used in the decorative food art, garde manger.

History

The cucumber is believed to be native to India, and evidence indicates that it has been cultivated in Western Asia for 3,000 years. From India, it spread to Greece (where it was called "vilwos") and Italy (where the Romans were especially fond of the crop), and later into China. It was probably introduced into other parts of Europe by the Romans, and records of cucumber cultivation appear in France in the 9th Century, England in the 14th Century, and in North America by the mid-16th Century.

The Roman Emperor Tiberius had the cucumber on his table daily during summer and winter. The Romans reportedly used artificial methods (similar to the greenhouse system) of growing to have it available for his table every day of the year. They would be wheeled out in carts to sit in the sun daily, then taken in to keep them warm, and stored under frames or in cucumber houses glazed with oiled cloth known as "specularia."

Pliny the Elder describes the Italian fruit as very small, probably like a gherkin. In "Book XX. Remedies Derived from the Garden Plants Chapter 2. (1.) -- The Wild Cucumber; Twenty-Six Remedies," he states, "We have already stated that there is a wild cucumber, considerably smaller than the cultivated one. From this cucumber the medicament known as "elaterium" is prepared,..." but some scholars believe that he refers, here, to Cucumis silvestris asininus, a different plant from the common cucumber. A copper etching made by Maddalena Bouchard between 1772 and 1793 shows this plant to have smaller, almost bean-shaped fruits, and small yellow flowers. Pliny does write quite a bit about several varieties of cucumber, including the Cultivated Cucumber (Book XX, chap. 5), the "Anguine or Erratic Cucumber" (Book XX, Chap 4. (2.)), and several remedies from each (9 from the cultivated, 5 from the "anguine", and a whopping 26 from the "wild"). The Romans are reported to have used cucumbers to treat scorpion bites, bad eyesight, and to scare away mice. Wives wishing for children wore them around their waists. They were also carried by the midwives and thrown away when the child was born.

The ancient legend of Gilgamesh describes people eating cucumbers.

The cucumber is also listed among the products of ancient Ur. Some sources also state that it was produced in ancient Thrace, and it is certainly part of modern cuisine in Bulgaria and Turkey, parts of which make up that ancient state.

Charlemagne had cucumbers grown in his gardens in 9th-Century France. They were reportedly introduced into England in the early 1300's, lost, then reintroduced approximately 250 years later.

The small form of the cucumber is figured in Herbals of the sixteenth century, but states, 'if hung in a tube while in blossom, the Cucumber will grow to a most surprising length.' The vegetable is mentioned in the Bible (Numbers 11:5) as having been freely available in Egypt, even to the enslaved Israelites: "We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick:".

The Israelites later came to cultivate the cucumber: in Isaiah 1:8, the method of agriculture is mentioned briefly. There was a "lodge," or shelter for the person who kept the birds away, and guarded the garden from robbers.

The Spaniards (in the person of Christopher Columbus) brought cucumbers to Haiti in 1494. In 1535, Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, found "very great cucumbers" grown on the site of what is now Montreal.

Throughout the 1500s, European trappers, traders, bison hunters, and explorers bartered for the products of Native American agriculture. The tribes of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains learned from the Spaniard how to grow European vegetables. The best farmers on the Great Plain were the Mandan Indians in what is now North and South Dakota. They obtained cucumbers and watermelons from the Spaniards, and added them to the vegetables they were already growing, including several varieties of corn and beans, pumpkins, squash, and gourd plants. The Iroquois were also growing them when the first Europeans visited them.

In 1630, the Reverend Francis Higginson produced a book called, "New England's Plantation," in which, describing a garden on Conant's Island in Boston Harbor known as "The Governor's Garden," he states: "The countrie aboundeth naturally with store of roots of great varietie and good to eat. Our turnips, parsnips, and carrots are here both bigger and sweeter than is ordinary to be found in England. Here are store of pompions, cowcumbers, and other things of that nature which I know not..."

William Wood also published in 1633's New England Prospect (published in England) observations he made in 1629 in America: "The ground affords very good kitchin gardens, for Turneps, Parsnips, Carrots, Radishes, and Pompions, Muskmillons, Isquoter-squashes, coucumbars, Onyons, and whatever grows well in England grows as well there, many things being better and larger."

In the later 1600s, a prejudice developed against uncooked vegetables and fruits. A number of articles in contemporary health publications state that uncooked plants brought on summer diseases and should be forbidden to children. The cucumber kept this vile reputation for an inordinate period of time: "fit only for consumption by cows," which some believe is why it gained the name, "cowcumber."

Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary on September 22, 1663: "this day Sir W. Batten tells me that Mr. Newhouse is dead of eating cowcumbers, of which the other day I heard of another, I think."

Fredric Hasselquist, in his travels in Asia Minor, Egypt, Cyprus and Palestine in the 1700s, came across the Egyptian or hairy cucumber, Cucumis chate. It is said by Hasselquist to be the "queen of cucumbers, refreshing, sweet, solid, and wholesome." He also states that "they still form a great part of the food of the lower-class people in Egypt serving them for meat, drink and physic." George E. Post, in Hastings's "A Dictionary of the Bible," states, "It is longer and more slender than the common cucumber, being often more than a foot long, and sometimes less than an inch thick, and pointed at both ends."

Industry and geography

In the United States, the demand "for fresh-market cucumbers has been on the rise, while consumption of processed (pickled) cucumbers has been slowing. In general, however, cucumber use in the U.S. has been growing, with consumption totaling 3 billion pounds in 1999--up from 2.5 billion 10 years before and continuing the steady climb that began in the 1960's."

"Once considered mere animal fodder, "cukes" are now an important commercial and garden vegetable. The U.S. produces 4 percent of the world's cucumbers, ranking fourth behind China, Turkey, and Iran. The U.S. cucumber industry is unevenly spread across the 50 states, with 171,000 acres and 6,821 farms that ship into the fresh or processing markets. Cucumbers had an average farm value of $361 million annually during 1997-99." [1]

the so-called Armenian cucumber.

• In North America "wild cucumber" refers to manroot (Marah spp.).

References

• Cucumis sativus (TSN 22364). Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Accessed on January 30, 2006.

External links

• Plant profile at the Plants Database (http://plants.usda.gov/) - shows classification and distribution by US state.
• Cucumbers, regular: Plants for a Future database
• [2]: a very brief history of the cucumber in America
• [3]: cucumber as health food
• [4]: ancient history of the cucumber
• [5]: a brief article on cucumbers in Palestine
• [6]: a brief article on cucumber history
• [7]: specifics, including history, on cucumbers and their varieties
• [8]: several plants listed from a work by Pliny the Elder
• [9]: source noting cucumbers in Ur in 3000 B.C.