Curling brown scars on your cucumber?

What you see: A twisty, curly scar pattern on your cucumber.
What it is: Likely healed damage from some hungry insects.
Eat or toss: Peel and eat!

Lacy brown lines on your cucumber’s peel?

The curling pattern of the scars on this cucumber suggests some hungry critters enjoyed it before it arrived in your kitchen. A bit gross, yes, but since the injury is now sealed up and dry, we aren’t worried about food safety risks. 

Steve Sargent, professor and extension postharvest specialist at the University of Florida, said that wind blown sticks and other plant parts could also scrape against growing cukes, leaving a twisty scar pattern. In this case, however, insect damage seems more likely. 

“Sometimes when the fruit is really tiny, before it really starts to expand, bugs will chew on it,” he said. “Then when it expands, you have all these little dead cells that became scarred, healed wounds, and so now this is really just scar tissue.”

A possible culprit here? The striped cucumber beetle, which the Integrated Pest Management folks at Cornell University have called the “primary pest of cucurbits in the northeastern United States.” The yellow and black bugs specialize in cucumbers and their close relatives, like squash and zucchini. Just about any part of the plant is fair game to them, with adults munching on leaves, stems, flowers and fruit while larvae load up on roots and fruit resting on the ground. While damage from cucumber beetles can lead to infections in cucumber plants, in this case, the cucumber still looks firm and the injuries are dry and healed so we aren’t worried. 

You could theoretically eat the scarred areas, but the texture might be somewhat thick and unpleasant. But if you peel away the damage, your cucumber will be perfectly fine to eat.