Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show/podcast: Wild cucumber is back – 2022 style
Wild Cucumber is back…
although not as abundantly as last year. Which seems to be the case for many of our plants.
This vine is usually covering fields, trees, shrubs, grasses, flowers along nearly every rural road through Minnesota, Wisconsin and parts east, west and south!
Wild cucumber is generally overlooked until it has overtaken the plants it is growing on.
This vining annual in the cucumber or gourd family (Cucurbitaceae) is a native. Its Latin name is Echinocystis lobata. It has a spiny fruit. Growing throughout much of North America, it’s been significantly worse these last few years, 2022 being an exception so far.
This choking vine grows from seed each year and, literally looks like a cucumber plant at first.
The branching vines can grow up to 25 or 30 feet long, climbing onto other foliage with curling, 3-forked tendrils that arise from the leaf axils. The tendrils coil when they touch anything to attach onto for support.
While the flowers are kind of pretty and certainly fragrant, this plant can choke out smaller plants.
Wild Cucumber can create very dense, large patches, seeming to smother everything it covers but, according to minnesotawildflowers, it rarely does much actual damage.
The University of Wisconsin Horticulture Dept. has some great information on Wild Cucumber along with excellent photos.
Yet other information says it can do considerable damage. Wild Cucumber is NOT defined as invasive but rather AGGRESSIVE! Yes, you could say that! If you have these plants, pull them off. Don’t use chemicals, you’ll also damage the plant it’s on.