CUCUMBER 



(Magnolia Acuminata) 



HIS tree is a member of the magnolia family which has ten genera in 

 A North America, two of them, magnolia and liriodendron, being 

 trees. The family has its name from Pierre Magnol, a French botanist 

 who died in 1715. The genus magnolia has seven species in the United 

 States, all of which are of tree size. They are evergreen magnolia 

 (Magnolia falida), sweet magnolia (Magnolia glaiica), cucumber 

 (Magnolia acuminata), largeleaf umbrella (Magnolia macrophylla), 

 umbrella tree (Magnolia tripetala), Fraser umbrella (Magnolia fraseri), 

 and pyramidal magnolia (Magnolia pyramidata). The remaining 

 member of the magnolia family is the yellow poplar (Liriodendron 

 tidipiferd). Though of the same family it is of a different genus from 

 the seven other magnolias. 



The cucumber is the hardiest member of the magnolia family. It 

 is found in natural growth farther north than any other, yet it has the 

 appearance of a southern tree. All magnolias look like trees belonging 

 in the South. Their large leaves indicate as much, and some of them do 

 not venture far outside of the warm latitudes. It is one of the oldest of 

 all the families of broadleaf trees, and it has been a family that during an 

 immense period of the earth's history has clung near the old homestead 

 where it came into existence countless ages ago. There were magnolias 

 growing in the middle Appalachian region, and eastward to the present 

 Atlantic coast, so far in the past that the time can be measured only by 

 hundreds of thousands of years. Leaf prints in rocks, which were once 

 mud flats, tell the story though but a page here and there of the 

 magnolia's ancient history, doubtless antedating by long periods the 

 earliest appearance of man on earth. 



Next to the yellow poplar, the cucumber tree is the most important 

 species of the magnolia family, at least as a source of lumber. As an 

 ornamental tree it may not equal some of the others, particularly certain 

 of the southern species which are evergreen and produce large, showy 

 flowers. 



The cucumber tree receives its name from its fruit, which looks 

 like a cucumber when seen at a distance, but it is far from being one. Its 

 intense bitter makes it safe from the attacks of birds and beasts. So far 

 as known, it is not eaten, tasted, or touched by any living creature 

 except man. Some of the pioneer settlers, in the days when there was 

 precious little to eat on the frontiers, discovered a way of extracting the 

 bitter from the wild cucumber, and making some sort of a pickle of the 



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