WILD CUCUMBER

As I walk along the trails in winter, this bright green vine with tiny white star-shaped flowers tells me, "Spring is coming!" 

Wild cucumber is native to California and very useful for our ecosystem.  It is usually the first flowers to bloom after the winter rains and sometimes post-fires.  Although its long vines can be interpreted as invasive and appear to be keeping other plants from growing, it is actually doing the opposite.  Its large leaves and long branches provide shade and protection for those other sensative flowering plants that will be emerging in the coming months.  

Wild cucumber is in the same family as the cucumber that we serve for salads, but this plant is not edible.   

The Native Americans had many different uses for this plant.  Some have said that the Chumash children would play games using the seeds as marbles or beads.  
Other tribe groups were said to ground up the seeds and spread the powder in streams as a technique to catch fish.  The powder would remove the oxygen in the water and the fish would float to the top of the surface, making them easy to catch.  

Some people today use the empty seed pods as loofas and sponges. 

Wild cucumber can be found growing along the trails from December through May.  When the hot summers arrive, the leaves turn brown and the plant dries up.  The green seed pods harden and release their seeds.  The vine regrows from the seeds planted from the pods the following winter after the rains. 

An interesting fact regarding the seed pods is that they do not simply drop their seeds.  As the pod hardens, it creates pressure that actually shoots the seeds out, allowing the seeds to be dispersed farther from the original plant.

Plants fall into two growing categories: annual and perennial.  Annual plants have a shorter life cycle and need to be replanted each year.  Annual plants have a seed dispersal mechanism (wind, animals eating berries, or mechanical) that gives their seed a better chance to be planted somewhere.  

Perennials are plants that grow year round.  Some of our perennial plants though, go domant during certain seasons.  Although they look like they have dried up and died, thier root systems are very much alive and they are simply saving their growing energy during the hot summer months.  

Wild cucumber is considered a perennial.  It has an extrememly large root system under ground that waits for the winter rains as its time to remerge.  My hypothesis on why it has such a fantastic seed dispersal mechanism, even though it is a fairly hearty plant, is that it shoots the seed far away so the new plants won't become competition for nutrents and root space.  It has been said that some roots of older plants can be over 100 pounds.