Love Among The Vegetables

In a heartwarming story out of Louisiana, we here the tale of love in a vegetable garden. Love between the plants, that is. The gardeners planted cucumbers in one row and cantaloupes in another. The two plants met, fell in love and produced offspring.

Cuculoupes.

HOUMA, La. - They're a yard long and a good few inches across. The skin is waxy, sort of like a cucumber, but yellow and ridged like a cantaloupe. A half dozen of them grew between the cucumbers and cantaloupes in a Houma home garden.

"We call it a cuculoupe," Karen Dusenbery said.

As good a name as any.

"Science is strange sometimes," LSU AgCenter agent Barton Joffrion said after examining the whatsits.

"You see crosses like that. What happens is they planted them close in proximity, and they are in the same family," said Joffrion. "But it's not that common."

Both are members of the Cucurbit family, which includes pumpkins and gourds as well as melons and cucumbers.

Cucumbers and cantaloupes are closely related enough to swap genes, Joffrion said. He'd never seen anything like the Dusenberys' whatever.

Where's the romance in your soul, Mr. Joffrion? It wasn't science, it was love! One hopes for the Dusenbery's sake that the new fruit does not attract the wrong kind of attention, though.