Cucumber Seed

Cucumber seeds are the small, flat, teardrop-shaped, creamy-white seeds found in the watery centre of the fruit of Cucumis sativus, a trailing annual vine with rough leaves and tendrils. A single cucumber may hold hundreds of seeds, each only about eight to ten millimetres long, with a thin papery coat and a soft kernel.

When the fruit is young the seeds are tender and unnoticeable. In fully ripe, yellow cucumbers they harden and can be collected, dried and eaten like other cucurbit seeds. Dried seeds are sold in some Asian shops, in seed mixes, and for sowing, and the oil pressed from them is used in cosmetics and, to a small extent, cooking.

The cucumber is thought to have been domesticated in southern Asia, in the foothills of the Himalayas in India, where wild relatives grow, perhaps more than three thousand years ago. It later spread west to the Mediterranean, and east to China, becoming one of the oldest vegetables in cultivation.

The English word cucumber comes through Old French from Latin cucumis. The species name sativus means cultivated. In Hindi and Urdu, the seeds are known as kheera or khiyar seeds, and they feature in older Indian texts of traditional medicine under the names of the fruit.

Cucumbers were grown in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, and the Roman emperor Tiberius was reputed to eat them daily. The Hebrew Bible recalls the cucumbers of Egypt that the Israelites missed in the desert. By the Middle Ages the vegetable was widely grown across Europe and later carried by Columbus to the Americas.

The seeds themselves mostly appear in traditional medicine and in regional snack cultures. In Unani and Ayurvedic practice, the seeds, known as tukhm-e-khiyar, were crushed into cooling drinks such as sherbet and used as a diuretic. They are one of the cold seeds of Unani medicine, along with those of melon and gourd.

In north India, cucumber seeds form part of magaz, a blend of cucurbit kernels (melon, watermelon, pumpkin and cucumber) ground into rich sauces and sweets. Cucumber seed oil has attracted modern attention in skincare because of its fatty acid profile. Seeds sold for planting are an important commercial industry worldwide, with China, Iran, Turkey and Russia leading in fruit production.

In ripe cucumbers the seeds are eaten along with the flesh in salads, or scooped out and cooked. Dried seeds are roasted and eaten as a snack, ground into spice blends and sauces in Indian cooking as part of magaz, and added to cooling summer drinks such as sherbets and sattu. Cold-pressed cucumber seed oil is used in skin and hair care products.

In Ayurvedic and Unani traditions, the seeds are used as a cooling food and a gentle diuretic. Gardeners save seeds from fully ripened open-pollinated cucumbers by fermenting them briefly and drying them.

Cucumber seeds are rich in oil and contain protein, with a fatty acid profile dominated by linoleic acid, along with minerals such as magnesium and phosphorus. Traditional medicine uses them for cooling and urinary complaints, but modern human studies on cucumber seed are very scarce.

Eating cucumber flesh and seeds adds hydration and small amounts of vitamins K and C. Claims for the seeds beyond that, such as kidney or skin benefits, are traditional and have not been confirmed by high-quality trials.