Theory and Practice, Applied to the Cultivation of the Cucumber in the Winter Season

The Cucumber, Cucumis sativa, is supposed to be a native of the East Indies; but like many other of our culinary plants, the real stations which it naturally has occupied, are involved in obscurity: in habit it is a trailing herb, with thick fleshy stems, broadly palmate leaves, and yellow axillary monæcious flowers. In the natural arrangement of the vegetable kingdom, the genus of which it forms part, ranks in the first grand class, Vasculares, or those plants which are furnished with vessels, and woody fibre; in the sub-class Calycifloræ, or those in which the stamens are perigynous; and in the order Cucurbitaceæ, or that group, of which the genus Cucurbita, or Gourd family is the type.