Origin and Characterization of the ‘Lemon’ Cucumber

A touching tale was told by a huckster in the year of 1909 (3). In order to commemorate the wedding of his beloved daughter, he claimed that he plucked an orange blossom from her bridal bouquet and used it to pollinate a cucumber plant. The result of this bizarre union was, he said, a cucumber plant bearing fruit like that of an orange. He described its flesh as having the most delicious blending of the finest Florida orange with the crispness of a delectable cucumber. He offered to share his marvelous creation with others for only a dollar for each seed, which of course would be much more expensive with the inflated dollars of today. This preposterous claim of a cucumber x orange intergeneric hybrid was indignantly denounced by Fullerton (3) in 1910. He disclosed that it was nothing more than the ‘Lemon’ cucumber cultivar, which was listed in seed catalogs at that time.

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