In botany (the study of plants), fruits allow a flowering plant to reproduce. It’s widely cultivated and makes a nutritious addition to any diet. Culinary practices distinguish fruits from vegetables according to flavor and texture. Cucumbers grown to eat fresh are called slicing cucumbers. Detox water is claimed to have all sorts of health benefits, including weight loss. The epicarp forms a tough rind … Compared to slicers, picklers tend to be shorter, thicker, less-regularly shaped, and have bumpy skin with tiny white or black-dotted spines. Look no further, because the answer is, cucumbers are technically both! [35], After the outbreak, the World Health Organization stated that it was a completely new strain of the bacterium involved. You probably already know that cucumbers make for an excellent, easy-to-prepare addition to traditional tossed or fruit salads — and many don’t even want to imagine a world without pickles. Cucumbers are a type of edible plant that belongs to the gourd family. They aren’t usually eaten fresh but instead used to make — you guessed it — pickles. Looking for a new way to drink water? They are reputed to be easy to digest and to have a pleasant taste. Are seasonal fruit and vegetables better for the environment? All rights reserved. Is cucumber a fruit or a vegetable? Revisions to Roland Brown's North American Paleocene Flora by Steven R. Manchester at Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA. [4], A tendril emerges from cucumber vines to facilitate climbing, A bulb-shaped cucumber hanging on the vine, Organic gardener holding a fresh salad cucumber. The cucumber is a creeping vine that roots in the ground and grows up trellises or other supporting frames, wrapping around supports with thin, spiraling tendrils. Summary – Cucumbers are both fruit and vegetables! The vine has large leaves that form a canopy over the fruits. They were also carried by midwives, and thrown away when the child was born. Botanically, a cucumber is classified as a pepo, a type of botanical berry with a hard outer rind and no internal divisions. [11] Although any cucumber can be pickled, commercial pickles are made from cucumbers specially bred for uniformity of length-to-diameter ratio and lack of voids in the flesh. Summary – Cucumbers are both fruit and vegetables! …process is applied to a cucumber, its fermentable carbohydrate reserve is turned into acid, its colour changes from bright green to olive or yellow-green, and its tissue becomes translucent. Pepones, Of the Hearbes, Fruites, Woods, Waters and Mineralls, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cucumber&oldid=985300681, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2020, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from February 2013, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2012, Articles needing additional references from April 2015, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 25 October 2020, at 04:51. A number of articles in contemporary health publications stated that uncooked plants brought on summer diseases and should be forbidden to children. Botanical fruit that are culinary vegetables, For the 5-a-day recommendations, cucumbers are classified as salad vegetable, which is the culinary definition, because that is how most people learn about fruit and vegetables. In The Greenstone Door, William Satchell notes that "Te Moanaroa was dead – of a surfeit of cucumbers," having eaten four of the "prickly" melons. Newer gynoecious hybrid cultivars produce almost all female blossoms. In North America, the term wild cucumber refers to plants in the genera Echinocystis and Marah, though the two are not closely related. Where is Martha Elliott Bill Elliott ex-wife today? Though commonly thought to be a vegetable, cucumber is actually a fruit. Slicers grown commercially for the North American market are generally longer, smoother, more uniform in color, and have much tougher skin. The ovary can be inferior or superior. In warmer months, enjoy cucumber in your smoothies or gazpacho for a refreshing, cool flavor enhancement. This article explains what sea cucumbers are and reviews their…. Pickling cucumbers are much smaller and are the type used to make pickles. Pickling with brine, sugar, vinegar, and spices creates various flavored products from cucumbers and other foods. The pericarp is divided into three layers. In botany, flowering plants reproduce because of fruits. Cucumbers can occasionally pass for fruit when paired with other, sweeter fruits like berries or melon. They obtained cucumbers and watermelons from the Spanish, and added them to the crops they were already growing, including several varieties of corn and beans, pumpkins, squash, and gourd plants.