Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: Cucumber

Yesterday I posted a picture of a wild cucumber blossom and a tendril. Today I'd like to show you how beautiful and graceful the vining plant looks with fresh new green leaves and tendrils stretching out with hopes to find something to climb! You can see why I find these plants so irresistable to photograph, they're just so cool! This image was taken in April, 2012.

One of the things I love about macro lenses is the surprise when you see the image on your computer. Last year I took pictures of these flowers and was amazed to see how fuzzy the blossoms are! If you look at the flowers from any distance, they appear perfectly smooth! I think they are delicate beauties and finding them on our property made me so happy! This species of wild cucumber grows from Canada to California along the coast and produces small, oval, bitter-tasting cucumbers covered with prickles. The leaves were eaten by Native Americans, though they are bitter too. The flowers are female or male with distinguishing characteristics and both genders can appear on the same plant! If you would like to know more about Western Wild Cucumber, Wiki has a great page here: Western Wild Cucumber (Manroot)