IT may not look quite right on a plate of salad, but gardener Roland Wild, 67, is adamant that his BROWN cucumbers are just as tasty as their green cousins.

The 10-in tan-coloured cucumber was grown at the Ewood Allotments on Bolton Road -- and has fellow gardeners baffled. "It's a real novelty," said Mr Wild, of Tynwald Road. "It came up brown and it's still brown. We cut one open to see what it was like inside and it was beautiful. We ate it the other night."

Mr Wild mentioned the peculiar looking veg to green-fingered friends and also to judges at the recent Blackburn Flower show, but they said they had never seen anything like it.

Mr Wild, secretary of the Ewood Allotments and the Blackburn and District Allotment Society, now plans to write to the seed company to see if they can shed any light on the matter.

He said: "It's been fed and watered the same as all the others so I've no idea and neither has anyone else. I'd like to get to the bottom of it."

Gardening expert Fred Downham said the phenomenon is unusual but not unheard of.

He explained: "They mutate sometimes, it's called 'sport.' You get yellow cucumbers, white cucumbers, green cucumbers and sometimes brown ones. Brown cucumbers are not very common but it does happen."