A nurse was alarmed when one of her home-grown cucumbers appeared in her Forest Gate garden looking more white than alright.

The vegetable, usually dark green in colour, looked like it had been dipped in white emulsion when it popped up in

Valerie Stout’s vegetable patch.

Valerie, of Katherine Road, said she and husband, painter and decorator William, did not know whether they could take a bite.

She said: “We normally grow vegetables, this year they’ve been very good.

“But i’ve never seen anything like this before and we’ve been growing them for about 10 years.

I’m hoping its edible because we want to taste it.”

Valerie, who works at Mornington Hall Nursing Home in Manor Park, plans to hold on to it for a lot longer than normal.

“We don’t put anything like pesticides on them,” she added. “We just let them grow naturally.”

But gardening experts said there was nothing amiss with the colour.

Jonathan Lawler, from the Garden Centre in East Ham Market Hall, said white cucumbers were rarely seen but urged vegetable growers not to panic if they saw one.

He said: “They might have bought a packet of seeds where this were mixed in.

“Cucumbers are available in blonde and white varieties.

“They are perfectly normal and edible and look exactly the same on the inside as well.”