Ambitious and Aromatic

Native, not invasive.

Nestled down among the cattails, the wild cucumber is just beginning to make itself known, its frothy flowers releasing the sweetest perfume of late summer. Echinocystis lobata, commonly called 'manroot' because its enormous tuberous root may be the size and shape of a sleeping man, is a native annual vine that belongs to the cucumber family.

With agile, three-forked tendrils that coil and grab on to anything upright, it sprawls over nearby vegetation and festoons it with fragrant blossoms and pretty prickly green ornaments. It spreads crazy fast.

"The orbs dangle, pale green with darker stripes, like adorable baby watermelons on a vine of curls. Each one rests under its own leaf awning.”

Laura Yayac

By fall, it will have blanketed entire sections of this wetland, climbing up cattails, old woody branches and small trees, engulfing them in a lovely, flowered net. Although it grows aggressively like kudzu, unlike kudzu it usually lives in harmony with its neighbors and doesn’t kill them off.

The seed pods turn brown and papery in the fall and remain suspended to the vine. I think they look like fairy lanterns. If you see them along the roadside, gather a big tangle and take it home for a decorative accent in your dried arrangements. There will be more wild cucumbers next year.