Santa Cruz Sentinel, CA
Aug 24 2005

Andy Griffin: Down on the Farm

Have you ever heard of a task being pursued “to the bitter end” and
wondered why the end has to be bitter?

I’m a farmer, not a linguist, but I suspect the end is bitter because
the person who minted that metaphor was chewing on a cucumber.

Cucumbers are mild nowadays, and serve as perfectly innocuous
dip-delivery vehicles, but this was not always the case. In fact, if
you grow an old-fashioned, heirloom cucumber variety in your garden
and allow it to become stressed by heat and drought you may still
taste “the bitter end”.

For the tender, juicy cucumber bitterness is a successful
evolutionary trait. The arid mountains of northern India are the
ancestral home of the domesticated cucumber and wild species still
grow there.

A cucumber is about 98 percent water. When a ripe cucumber fruit
decomposes on the ground, the moisture that’s released from the
rotting tissue can be enough to sprout the cucumber’s seeds and
maintain the infant seedlings until a rainstorm.

But in a hot, dry environment, a succulent cucumber would look pretty
inviting to a thirsty rodents and humans. So wild cucumbers protected
themselves from predation by evolving a spiny skin, and by suffusing
their moist flesh with bitter flavors.

Many modern varieties of cucumber still sport reduced, vestigial
spines, at least while their fruits are juvenile, but agronomists
have bred out almost all of the bitterness from the domesticated
cultivars.

I say “almost” because the growing tip at the end of the cucumber,
the bitter end, has been the last part of the cucumber to get tamed.
Soon, thanks to all the advances being made in crop science, a
cliched phrase may be all that’s left of the cucumber’s original wild
flavor.

For the well-grown domestic cucumber, at least, the end is always
crunchy, wet and mild.

It’s hot now, which means cucumbers are sweet and happy as long as
they’re not thirsty. When we’re out in the fields picking cukes, we
keep an eye out for snakes. I’m sure we’ll find a ton of snakes in
our fields this week because we’re harvesting snake melons.

The snake melon is long and slender like a snake. Some snake melons
even curl, as though they are about to strike. But don’t fear; they
will calmly allow themselves to be sliced into coins and slathered
with yogurt and dill for a snack which is as cool as a cucumber.

In fact, even though it’s a bit of a botanical lie, most growers
prefer to label snake melons as “Armenian cucumbers” when they sell
them.

It’s no lie that Armenian cucumbers came from Armenia; they were
introduced into Italy from Armenia in the 1400s, it’s just that
they’re not cucumbers.

Armenian cucumbers are melons, snake melons, or Cucumis melo, like
the cantaloupe, not Cucumis sativus, like a true cucumber.

If you plant a handsome Armenian cucumber next to a lovely Lebanese
cucumber in a soft fluffy bed at the corner of your garden, they
won’t promiscuously tickle each others’ stigmas and stamens to any
great consequence. No melumbers or cukelons can sprout out of wedlock
because the facts of botany decree against it.

None of these facts about botanical nomenclature will make any
difference to consumers once they taste the snake melons.

These vegetable serpents are as crunchy and versatile as regular
cucumbers even when their fruits get big. Mature Armenian cucumbers
may reach several feet in length, but their flesh remains as tender,
moist and edible.

Snake melons make great salads, and you can even slip them into the
next English cucumber sandwich you serve the Queen for tea. She’d
never notice. But can’t you see the bold type and scandalous
headlines in the British tabloids if the news leaked out that the
Queen ate an Armenian cucumber at your house?

They would scream: “Elizabeth Regina Ate A Snake And Smiled!”

At least it wouldn’t be a story with a bitter end.