Video narration
How does a tiny flower turn into a cucumber? Cut one open: seeds inside, the clue that a cucumber is a fruit. But follow a flower on the vine and look beneath its petals. There's a small, cucumber-shaped bump. That isn't a second flower, and the petals don't become the cucumber. It's the flower's ovary: the base that can grow into fruit. For an ordinary seeded cucumber, pollen has to reach a female flower. That transfer is called pollination. Then pollen fertilizes tiny ovules inside the flower, the parts that will become seeds. Here's the surprising turn: the cucumber doesn't grow beside the flower. The flower's base grows into the cucumber. As the ovary swells, the flower fades away while the ovules develop into seeds inside. A female flower's base swells into the cucumber after pollination, with seeds forming inside.