Drive around virtually anywhere in Minnesota right now and there's a good chance a light green vine with white flowers and prickly looking fruit will catch your eye.
"It's the wild cucumber," said Alan Branhagen, Executive Director of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. "It starts flowering in August, and because we had such a rainy, wet spring, it did really well this year."
So well, Branhagen has been fielding a lot of concerned calls as people watch the vines filling up fences, scaling shrubs and even growing on evergreens up to 30 feet high.
"It can really kind of alarm people when they see it," he said.
That's evident on social media, where some have referred to the plant as an invasive species and others have claimed that it will overgrow and kill trees. Neither are true, Branhagen says.
"It's not something to worry about," he said. "I really just consider it a neat, native plant."
Alan says it's also no big threat to other vegetation. The vines are light and thin, meaning it doesn't generally kill any of the plants it grows on. Just don't expect to put it on a salad.
"It's in the same family as the cucumber," Branhagen said. "But it's an inedible species."
Even its scientific name is less scary than it sounds.
"Echinocystis: That's the Latin name for the plant," Branhagen said. "It means, like a hedgehog and a bladder."
But if those prickly looking bladders are something you don't want to see scaling the plants on your property, Branhagen says you should do something about it soon.
"Pulling them down now would be a good time," he said. "Get all these seed producing fruits out of there."
And pulling them down is as easy as it sounds. Because the vines are thin and light, it usually doesn't take too much effort. Mother nature is also capable of taking care of it.
"With the first frost it's history," Branhagen said.
Each of the cucumber pods contain four seeds that eventually drop to the ground once the plant matures and dries out. If you want to keep the vines from growing back, Branhagen says you'll want to make sure to remove the pods soon.