Cucumber is a simple plant and is found in every summer cottage. However, there is a much less well-known group of plants under the general name "mad cucumber", which includes three representatives.
Ekballium
Initially, the southern plant, ecballium, was called mad cucumber. It is found in the semi-deserts of the Mediterranean and Western Asia. Ecballium has cucumber leaves, pale yellow flowers and ovoid green fruits that resemble cucumber in shape. Their sizes reach 5 cm.
When ripe, the pulp of a ripe fruit becomes sticky and runny. Black seeds float in this liquid. Even from a slight concussion, the stalk flies out of the fetus, followed by mucus escaping from the fetus under pressure. This is how the seeds enter the soil. The shell of the plant flies away from the bush at a distance of up to two meters.
It must be remembered that ecballium is a poisonous plant that can cause fatal poisoning.
Echinocystis
Another plant called mad cucumber is echinocystis. Literally translated from Latin, its name means "hedgehog bubble" or "prickly bubble". It appeared in Russia quite recently - just a few decades ago. The homeland of this representative of the lianas family is America.
More recently, Echinocystis was grown as a great rarity, but it very quickly went wild, becoming a weed. This mad cucumber twines around trees and shrubs, densely covers the ground and prevents other plants from growing.
Its fruits look like little hedgehogs or spiky tennis balls. When the fruit is ripe, two holes open at the tip. It is from there that large seeds fall out.
From a botanical point of view, echinocystis is not so much a close relative of a cucumber as a loofah - a plant from the pumpkin family.
Explosive cyclanter and pedunculate cyclanter
Cyclanter is also referred to as mad cucumbers. On the territory of Russia, this pumpkin plant is quite rare and grows mainly in Southeast Asia and India.
There are two types of cyclanter: explosive and leg. Both of these species have inconspicuous flowers and very beautiful densely dissected leaves.
The first type - exploding cyclanter, has thorny small fruits, similar in shape to a thick comma or a hooked cucumber. The ripe fruit explodes, but not as reactively as the ecballium. It just cracks along and turns inside out, exposing the seeds.
The second type - cyclantera pedunculate, is considered a South Asian vegetable. Its fruits are smooth and shiny, hanging on rather long legs. They ripen late, almost at the end of September.
Cyclantera is stewed, fried, boiled, or eaten raw. It tastes like a regular cucumber, but its rind is tougher and the fruits are smaller.
