Wild Cucumber

 Echinocystis lobata on my trellis

Wild cucumber is an incredibly fascinating plant that I was first introduced to by my wife and her mother. In some parts of Canada and the United States it is an incredibly invasive species. In my own experience it is not unheard of for individual tendrils to grow 6 inches a day. It is an amazing cover plant for unsightly areas or place where you would like more shade. The Ontario Wild Flower website has many great pictures of the plant flowering and the fruit which resemble green hedgehogs and fire their seeds out in little explosions in late summer. Anyone interested in getting their hands on some seeds please let me know. A word of warning though... once planted they will come back with a vengeance every year. This species is very persistant and can launch its seeds quite far from the mother vine. That being said as anyone who gardens knows, it is very easy to kill a cucumber with a lawnmower, unlike  plants that spread by runners and roots. The seeds need stratification and will not germinate unless they have been left in the cold for a significant period of time. For these plants I collected the seeds midwinter from the dried fruit husks that are left on the vine in the winter.