Cucumber Tree

Common Name: Cucumber Tree^[1]

Scientific Name: Magnolia acuminata

Thomas Jefferson considered the tree as an ornamental species in his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1781).^[2] He requested plants in a letter dated January 17, 1786 to John Bartram, Jr., the Philadelphia botanist and nurseryman^[3], and in 1810 Jefferson planted "Cucumber tree seeds" in his nursery at Monticello.^[4] This North American tree was first discovered in 1736 by Virginia's early botanist, John Clayton.^[5] In 1802 the French naturalist, François Michaux, observed the cucumber tree on the banks of the Juniata River in Pennsylvania and remarked: "The inhabitants-€¦pick the cones when green, to infuse in whiskey, which gives it a pleasant bitter-€¦[and which is] much esteemed-€¦as a preventive against intermittent fevers, but I have my doubts whether it would be so generally used if it had the same qualities when mixed with water."^[6]

The Cucumber Tree is a hardy, deciduous, tree with greenish-yellow, bell-shaped flowers that appear with leaves in early spring, and has cucumber-like fruits which are green at first, then covered with purplish-red fruits in fall.

Primary Source References^[7]

1805 October 26 (Jefferson to Madame de Tessé). "Magnolia acuminata. this plant is not of Virginia, except it's South Western angle, 250 miles from hence. I send you the only cone of it I ever saw, and which came to me accidentlly [sic] not long since. the tree I have never seen."^[8]

1807 November 24. (Jefferson to Edmund Bacon). "P.S. I have forgotten to mention that in the box of Paccans there are 3. papers of seeds, to wit, Cucumber tree...Wormley must plant in the Nursery..."^[9]

Footnotes

1. ↑ This section is based on a Center for Historic Plants Information Sheet.
2. ↑ Notes ed. Peden, 40.
3. ↑ Betts, Garden Book, 109.
4. ↑ Ibid, 422. Manuscript and transcription at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
5. ↑ Denise Wiles Adams, Restoring American Gardens: An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants, 1640-1940 (Portland, Oregon: Timber Press, Inc., 2004), 85.
6. ↑ Michaux, Travels to the west of the Alleghany [sic] mountains, in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessea [sic] ... comprising the most interesting details on the present state of agriculture, and the natural produce of those countries ... under-taken, in the year 1802 2nd ed. (London, 1805), 38-39.
7. ↑ Please note that this list should not be considered comprehensive.
8. ↑ Betts, Garden Book, 306.
9. ↑ Ibid, 355.

Further Sources

• Betts, Edwin M., Hazlehurst Bolton Perkins, and Peter J. Hatch. Thomas Jefferson's Flower Garden at Monticello, 3rd ed. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986
• Coates, Alice M. Garden Shrubs and their Histories. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992
• Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants