Ann Bot. 2011 Sep; 108(3): 471–484.
Published online 2011 Jul 27. doi: 10.1093/aob/mcr182
PMCID: PMC3158695
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.
Abstract
Background
The genus Cucumis contains two species of important vegetable crops, C. sativus, cucumber, and C. melo,
melon. Melon has iconographical and textual records from lands of the
Mediterranean Basin dating back to antiquity, but cucumber does not. The
goal of this study was to obtain an improved understanding of the
history of these crops in the Occident. Medieval images purportedly of Cucumis
were examined, their specific identity was determined and they were
compared for originality, accuracy and the lexicography of their
captions.
Findings
The
manuscripts having accurate, informative images are derived from Italy
and France and were produced between 1300 and 1458. All have an
illustration of cucumber but not all contain an image of melon. The
cucumber fruits are green, unevenly cylindrical with an approx. 2:1
length-to-width ratio. Most of the images show the cucumbers marked by
sparsely distributed, large dark dots, but images from northern France
show them as having densely distributed, small black dots. The different
size, colour and distribution reflect the different surface wartiness
and spininess of modern American and French pickling cucumbers. The
melon fruits are green, oval to serpentine, closely resembling the chate
and snake vegetable melons, but not sweet melons. In nearly all
manuscripts of Italian provenance, the cucumber image is labelled with
the Latin caption citruli, or similar, plural diminuitive of citrus (citron, Citrus medica). However, in manuscripts of French provenance, the cucumber image is labelled cucumeres, which is derived from the classical Latin epithet cucumis for snake melon. The absence of melon in some manuscripts and the expropriation of the Latin cucumis/cucumer
indicate replacement of vegetable melons by cucumbers during the
medieval period in Europe. One image, from British Library ms. Sloane
4016, has a caption that allows tracing of the word ‘gherkin’ back to
languages of the geographical nativity of C. sativus, the Indian subcontinent.
Keywords: Art history, crop history, cucumber, Cucumis melo, Cucumis sativus, Cucurbitaceae, cultivar-group, etymology, gherkin, melon, plant iconography, plant lexicography, plant taxonomy
INTRODUCTION
The genus Cucumis
L. includes two important vegetable crops, cucumber and melon, both of
which are procumbent, herbaceous, tendril-bearing annual vines (Whitaker and Davis, 1962; Kirkbride, 1993; Robinson and Decker-Walters, 1997). Cucumber, C. sativus L., plants are stiffly hairy and have acutely pentagonal leaf laminae. Melon, C. melo
L., plants are softly hairy and have rounded cordate leaf laminae. In
both species, the flowers are borne in leaf axils and are bright yellow,
approx. 2–3 cm in diameter, open in the morning and remain viable for
much of the day, during which they are visited by bees. Melons usually
are andromonoecious or monoecious; hermaphroditic and pistillate flowers
do not differentiate on the main stem (or primary shoot) but can appear
at the first one or two nodes of branches (side shoots; Rosa, 1924).
Cucumbers usually are monoecious; the staminate flowers differentiate
at the first leaf axils but the tendency to produce pistillate flowers
increases during plant development; pistillate flowers can differentiate
at leaf axils on the main shoot as well as side shoots (Shifriss, 1961).
In both species, the pistillate and hermaphroditic flowers have
inferior ovaries which can develop into fruits after pollination.
Cucumber
fruits usually are harvested when young and immature, 5–10 d after
anthesis, at which time they have achieved a size range for culinary
use, fresh or processed. Although most melons grown today are harvested
as mature fruits, 4–6 weeks or more past anthesis, some melons are also
grown for the use of their young, immature fruits, like cucumbers. The
young fruits of melons, however, are easily distinguished from
cucumbers. Young melons are softly hispid and often marked by distinct,
bold longitudinal stripes, lobes and furrows, or wrinkles. Cucumbers, on
the other hand, are glabrous except for the usual presence of
tubercles, which are bumpy outgrowths or execrensces often referred to
as ‘warts’, that are capped with short, hard, usually black but
sometimes white ‘spines’; striping, furrowing or wrinkling are
indistinct or absent (Paris and Maynard, 2008).
Cucumis sativus
is thought to have originated and been first domesticated on the Indian
subcontinent and spread eastward to China by 2000 years ago (De Candolle, 1886; Li, 1969; Keng, 1974; Walters, 1989; Kuriachan and Beevy, 1992; Bisht et al., 2004). New molecular-based evidence has indicated that C. melo, too, has an Asian origin (Sebastian et al., 2010).
Primitive and reportedly indigenous melons have also been found outside
of Asia, in closer proximity to the Mediterranean Basin (Mohamed and Yousif, 2004).
Many writers thought that cucumbers were familiar to civilizations
around the Mediterranean Sea in antiquity and the classical period, but
upon closer examination this assumption has been shown to be devoid of
evidence (Janick et al., 2007). The fruits illustrated in those eras and named sikyos (Greek), cucumis (Latin) and qishu'im (Hebrew) were elongate melons, C. melo, and mistakenly interpreted as cucumbers, C. sativus.
However, upon cursory examination, young cucumber fruits are
distinguishable from young melon fruits by not being hairy and having
neither distinct striping nor lobing and furrowing. So, in fact, C. sativus is unrecorded in ancient or classical times in Europe or around the Mediterranean Sea.
