Creeping Cucumber

Creeping Cucumber (Melothria pendula). Perfect for a dollhouse if you need a tiny watermelon of dollhouse scale. If only they would last. It is native to southeastern North America.

With flowers of yellow, just 1/4 inch across. Though it is native it will be treated as a weed here. A weed, after all is a plant that grows where you don’t want it. And that is what this plant has done. Moved itself into the vegetable garden unbidden.

Creeping Cucumber is indeed in the cucumber family (Cucurbitaceae) and its leaves resemble cucumbers that you’re used to seeing in the vegetable garden. It tastes like those cucumbers that you grow in the garden too. But use caution. Only eat the light colored Creeping Cucumbers. The ones that look like tiny watermelons. As they mature they will darken to a purple-black. At this stage they are an incredibly powerful laxative.

Published by

Brenda Clements Jones

Brenda is a certified Virginia Master Naturalist, a Habitat Defender for Shenandoah National Park, and a devoted fan of Mother Nature. She lives in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Shenandoah National Park, and hikes up to the higher elevations of her mountain often to see what nature is up to. Her constant hiking companion is a camera that captures nature as it unfolds through the seasons. It’s her goal to share the natural world around her through her photographs.