by Megan Stoddard

Created on: November 29, 2010

Unassuming and ever present, the fruit of cucumis sativus is one of the world’s most popular vegetables. Ubiquitous in salad, synonymous with pickles, and lending itself well to cool summer soups, the cucumber is one of the world’s oldest and most popular gourds. As well as being food, it has a long history of being used to moisten and rejuvenate skin, a use continued even in upscale beauty salons to this day.

Being the seed bearing part of the plant, the cucumber is botanically a fruit. But because of its flavor and culinary uses, we consider it a vegetable. While most of us know the thick skinned, dark green variety commonly sold in supermarkets, cucumbers actually come in many varieties. They can be smaller or larger, thinner or rounder, and more flavorful.

While most varieties are medium to dark green, one, the lemon cucumber, is a greenish yellow when ripe. One type of domestic cucumber, the Armenian or snake cucumber, is a different species of cucumis. All others are varieties of cucumis sativus.

Easy to grow, cucumis sativus is recommended for any vegetable garden. It is a good beginner plant, ideal for children and inexperienced gardeners, as well as seasoned horticulturalists. The plants are generous producers. One alone can yield as much as 30 pounds in a growing season.

Cucumbers usually begin to fruit in the late spring or early summer and continue producing until mid autumn or the first frost, whichever comes first. They should be harvested when young. If allowed to mature on the vine, the vegetables become tough and inedible. Harvesting the young cucumbers also keeps the plant producing.

Vegetable gardeners have liked the cucumber for at least 3,000 years, making it one of the world’s oldest continuously cultivated vegetables. Native to the Himalayan foothills, it was known through much of western Asia by 1000 BCE. From there, it spread to eastern Asia, northern Africa, and the Mediterranean, being cultivated in Greece and Rome during their respective heydays. Elsewhere in Europe, the cucumber was being grown by medieval times.

Today, cucumbers are available in supermarkets year round, making many people unaware that they are summer vegetables. Greenhouses are used to grow cucumbers out of season, and they can also be shipped from the other hemisphere during the winter months.

Though having cucumbers out of season is easier in our own time, it is not a modern phenomenon. The Roman emperor Tiberius liked cucumbers so much that he insisted on having them year round. Greenhouses and other artificial growing methods were used to satisfy his whim. The year round cucumber is proof that modern technology allows all of us to live like a Roman emperor.

Indeed, our current uses for cucumis sativus show that, while technology may provide more cucumbers, it has little improvement over the cucumber itself. Now, as thousands of years ago, women wishing to beautify their skin swear by the cucumber.

As a food, it has countless uses, the bare minimum of which are common in our culture. Whereas North Americans mainly eat cucumbers raw, East Europeans have many traditional dishes that include cooked cucumbers. Though we associate this vegetable mainly with salads and pickles, that is just the tip of the iceberg of its long history.

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