Scientific Name: Magnolia acuminata

Common Name: Cucumber Tree

Thomas Jefferson considered the cucumber tree as an ornamental species in his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1781).[1] He requested plants in a 1786 letter to John Bartram, Jr., the Philadelphia botanist and nurseryman.[2] In 1810, Jefferson noted "Cucumber tree seeds" among the plantings in Monticello's nursery.[3]

This North American tree was first discovered in 1736 by Virginia's early botanist, John Clayton.[4] 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. This bitter is very 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."[5]

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 and then covered with purplish-red fruits in fall.

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Primary Source References

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 accidentally not long since. the tree I have never seen."[6]

1807 November 24. (Jefferson to Edmund Bacon). "P.S. I have forgot to mention that in the box of Paccans there are 3. papers of seeds, to wit, Cucumber tree, Mountain Laurel, & Pitch pine. the 2 former Wormley [Hughes] must plant in the Nursery."[7]

- Peggy Cornett, n.d.

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Further Sources

References

  1. ^ Notes, ed. Peden, 40.
  2. ^ Jefferson to Bartram, January 27, 1786, in PTJ, 9:229. Transcription available at Founders Online.
  3. ^ Garden Book, 1766-1824, page 40, by Thomas Jefferson [electronic edition], Thomas Jefferson Papers: An Electronic Archive (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2003). See also Betts, Garden Book, 422.
  4. ^ Denise Wiles Adams, Restoring American Gardens: An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants, 1640-1940 (Portland, OR: Timber Press, Inc., 2004), 85.
  5. ^ F. André Michaux, Travels to the west of the Alleghany mountains: in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessea, and back to Charleston, by the upper Carolinas; comprising the most interesting details on the present state of agriculture, and the natural produce of these countries ... undertaken, in the year 1802, 2d ed. (London: Printed by D. N. Shury, for B. Crosby and Co., 1805), 38-39.
  6. ^ Betts, Garden Book, 306. Transcription available at Founders Online.
  7. ^ Betts, Garden Book, 355. Transcription available at Founders Online.