The cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is a widely-cultivated creeping vine plant in the family Cucurbitaceae that bears cylindrical to spherical fruits, used as culinary vegetables. Considered an annual plant, there are three main types of cucumber—slicing, pickling, and seedless.
They have been cultivated for at least 3,000 years, and were eaten all year round by the Roman Emperor Tiberius. In the Middle Ages, Charlemagne had them grown for him, and the Spanish brought them to the Americas in the Columbian exchange in 1494. World production is led by China with over three quarters of the total.
Description
The cucumber is an annual[1]creeping vine that roots in the ground and grows up trellises or other supporting frames, wrapping around supports with thin, spiraling tendrils.[2][3] The plant can root in a soilless medium, then sprawl along the ground in the absence of a supporting structure. The vine has large leaves that form a canopy over the fruits.[4]
The fruit of typical cultivars of cucumber is roughly cylindrical, but elongated with tapered ends, and may be as large as 62 centimeters (24 in) long and 10 centimeters (4 in) in diameter.[5]
Cucumber fruits consist of 95% water (see nutrition table). In botanical terms, the cucumber is classified as a pepo, a type of botanical berry with seeds and an outer rind.[6] In a culinary context, it is considered a vegetable.[6]
Most cucumber cultivars are seeded and require pollination. For this purpose, thousands of honeybeehives are carried to cucumber fields each year just before bloom. Cucumbers can be pollinated by bumblebees and several other wild bee species. Most cucumbers that require pollination are self-incompatible, thus requiring the pollen of another plant in order to form seeds and fruit.[7] Some self-compatible cultivars exist that are related to the 'Lemon cucumber' cultivar.[7]
Traditional cultivars produce male blossoms first, then female, in about equivalent numbers. Newer gynoecious hybrid cultivars produce almost all female blossoms. They may have a pollenizer cultivar interplanted, and the number of beehives per unit area is increased, but temperature changes induce male flowers even on these plants, which may be sufficient for pollination to occur.[7]
Example cultivars
Salad cucumber
An Indian yellow cucumber
Komkommer (Cucumis sativus 'Gele Tros')
A varietal grown by the Hmong people with textured skin and large seeds
In horticulture, cucumbers are classified into three main cultivar groups: slicing, pickling, and seedless/burpless. Cucumbers grown to eat fresh are called slicing cucumbers. The main varieties of slicers mature on vines with large leaves that provide shading.[4][23] Slicers grown commercially for the North American market are generally longer, smoother, more uniform in color, and have much tougher skin. In contrast, those in other countries, often called European cucumbers, are smaller and have thinner, more delicate skin, often with fewer seeds, thus are often sold in plastic skin for protection. This variety is called a 'telegraph cucumber' in Australasia.[24]
Pickling with brine, sugar, vinegar, and spices creates flavored products from cucumbers and other foods.[25] Cucumbers grown for pickling are shorter, thicker, and thinner-skinned than other varieties.[26]
Gherkins, cornichons,[27] or baby pickles, are small cucumbers, typically those 2.5 to 12.5 centimetres (1 to 5 in) in length, often with bumpy skin, which are typically used for pickling.[28][29][30] The word gherkin comes from the early modern Dutchgurken or augurken ('small pickled cucumber').[31] The term is used in the name for Cucumis anguria, the West Indian gherkin, a closely related species.[32]
Burpless cucumbers are sweeter and have a thinner skin than other varieties of cucumber. They are reputed to be easy to digest and to have a pleasant taste. They can grow as long as 60 centimeters (2 ft), are nearly seedless, and have a delicate skin. Most commonly grown in greenhouses, these parthenocarpic cucumbers are often found in grocery markets, shrink-wrapped in plastic. They are marketed as either burpless or seedless, as the seeds and skin of other varieties of cucumbers are said to give some people gas.[33]
Cucumber shoots are regularly consumed as a vegetable, especially in rural areas. In Thailand they are often served with a crab meat sauce. They can be stir fried or used in soups.[34]
Lobster, Crab, and a Cucumber by William Henry Hunt (watercolour, 1826 or 1827)
Cultivated for at least 3,000 years, "Cucumis sativus" were domesticated in India from wild "C. sativus var. hardwickii".[35][36][37] where a great many varieties have been observed, along with its closest living relative, Cucumis hystrix.[38] The three main cultivar groups of cucumber are Eurasian cucumbers (slicing cucumbers eaten raw and immature), East Asian cucumbers (pickling cucumbers), and Xishuangbanna cucumbers. Based on demographic modelling, the East Asian C. sativus cultivars diverged from the Indian cultivars about 2,500 years ago.[39] It was probably introduced to Europe by the Greeks or Romans. Records of cucumber cultivation appear in France in the 9th century, England in the 14th century, and in North America by the mid-16th century.[40][41][42][43]
Roman Empire
According to Pliny the Elder, the Emperor Tiberius had the cucumber on his table daily during summer and winter. In order to have it available for his table every day of the year, the Romans reportedly used artificial growing methods (similar to the greenhouse system) using mirrorstone, Pliny's lapis specularis, believed to have been sheet mica: "Indeed, he was never without [cucumbers]; for he had raised beds made in frames upon wheels, by means of which the cucumbers were moved and exposed to the full heat of the sun; while, in winter, they were withdrawn, and placed under the protection of frames glazed with mirrorstone."[44][45] They were cultivated in specularia, cucumber houses glazed with oiled cloth.[44] Pliny describes the vegetable as very small, probably like a gherkin. Separately, he describes the preparation of a medication known as elaterium, but this may have been Ecballium elaterium, known in pre-Linnean times as Cucumis silvestris or Cucumis asininus ('wild cucumber' or 'donkey cucumber'), a different species.[46] Pliny writes about several other varieties of cucumber, including the cultivated cucumber,[47] and remedies from the different types (9 from the cultivated; 5 from the "anguine;" and 26 from the "wild").[citation needed]
Middle Ages
Charlemagne had cucumbers grown in his gardens in the 8th/9th century. They were reportedly introduced into England in the early 14th century, lost, then reintroduced approximately 250 years later. The Spaniards (through the ItalianChristopher Columbus) brought cucumbers to Haiti in 1494. In 1535, Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, found "very great cucumbers" grown on the site of what is now Montreal.[48]
Early-modern era
Concombre Fournier in "Les plantes potagères" Vilmorin 1925
Throughout the 16th century, European trappers, traders, bison hunters, and explorers bartered for the products of American Indian agriculture. The tribes of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains learned from the Spanish how to grow European crops. The farmers on the Great Plains included the Mandan and Abenaki. 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.[49] The Iroquois were growing them when the first Europeans visited them.[50] In 1630, the Reverend Francis Higginson wrote in his book New-Englands Plantation that "The countrie aboundeth naturally with store of roots of great varietie and good to eat. Our turnips, parsnips, and carrots are here both bigger and sweeter than is ordinary to be found in England. Here are store of pompions, cowcumbers, and other things of that nature which I know not".[51] In New England Prospect (1633, England), William Wood wrote that "The ground affords very good kitchin gardens, for Turneps, Parsnips, Carrots, Radishes, and Pompions, Muskmillons, Isquoter-squashes, coucumbars, Onyons, and whatever grows well in England grows as well there, many things being better and larger."[52]
Age of Enlightenment
Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary on 22 August 1663 that "this day Sir W. Batten tells me that Mr. Newburne is dead of eating cowcumbers, of which the other day I heard of another, I think.[53] John Evelyn in 1699 wrote that the cucumber, "however dress'd, was thought fit to be thrown away, being accounted little better than poyson".[54][55] According to the 18th-century British lexicographer and wit Samuel Johnson, it was commonly said among English physicians that a cucumber "should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing."[56]
^ ab"Cucumis sativus". North Carolina State University, Extension Gardener. 2025. Retrieved 12 October 2025.
^Zhang, Tingting; Li, Xvzhen; Yang, Yuting; Guo, Xiao; Feng, Qin; Dong, Xiangyu; Chen, Shuxia (2019). "Genetic analysis and QTL mapping of fruit length and diameter in a cucumber (Cucumber sativus L.) recombinant inbred line (RIL) population". Scientia Horticulturae. 250: 214–222. Bibcode:2019ScHor.250..214Z. doi:10.1016/j.scienta.2019.01.062. S2CID92837522.
^Shang, Yi; Ma, Yongshuo; Zhou, Yuan; et al. (28 November 2014). "Biosynthesis, regulation, and domestication of bitterness in cucumber". Science. 346 (6213): 1084–1088. doi:10.1126/science.1259215.
^"Gherkins". Venlo, Netherlands: Zon. 2017. Archived from the original on 14 November 2017. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
^"Cucumbers"(PDF). University of California-Davis: Western Institute for Food Safety and Security, US Department of Agriculture. May 2016. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
^"Cucumbers and gherkins". Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, Government of India. 2015. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
^Bisht, I. S.; Bhat, K.V.; Tanwar, S. P. S.; Bhandari, D. C.; Joshi, Kamal; Sharma, A. K. (January 2004). "Distribution and genetic diversity of Cucumis sativus var. hardwickii (Royle) Alef in India". The Journal of Horticultural Science and Biotechnology. 79 (5): 783–791. Bibcode:2004JHSB...79..783B. doi:10.1080/14620316.2004.11511843.
^ abJames, Peter J.; Thorpe, Nick; Thorpe, I. J. (1995). "Ch. 12, Sport and Leusure: Roman Gardening Technology". Ancient Inventions. Ballantine Books. p. 563. ISBN978-0-345-40102-1.
^Buchanan, David (2012). Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and why They Matter. VT, USA: Chelsea Green Publishing. p. 109. ISBN9781603584401.
^Kuhnlein, H. V.; Turner, N. J. (1996). Traditional Plant Foods of Canadian Indigenous Peoples: Nutrition, Botany and Use. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Gordon and Breach. p. 159. ISBN978-2881244650.
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