Oregon Wild Cucumber

Now here's a native wildflower with something different: cucumbers! The Oregon Wild Cucumber (Marah oreganus) is also called Manroot, Costal Manroot, and Oregon Bigroot among others! The leaves are about 7 inches wide the plant is basically a vine that grabs onto what it can. Those paper white blossoms do turn into the pickle shaped cucumbers, with lots of hairs. It grows quickly on the coast and near damp areas with good soil.

According to Wikipedia, most of the plant was used by Native Americans for a variety of medicinal purposes: for example the Salish used it to treat kidney problems, venereal disease, and day to day sores.

We spotted this vine on the forest bike path at Champoeg State Park on 6/15/2013.