Wild cucumber, Marah fabacea, is also known as manroot because it develops massive tubers that can weigh as much as a man. Such tubers can supposedly weigh more than two hundred pounds, and some sources claim that they can weigh twice as much. That is a lot of storage.
Their thin leaves, slender vines, tiny flowers and fleshy fruit are not very substantial, and can not be very consumptive. They are quite watery, and leave minimal debris when cut and dried, or when they die back after frost.
So, why does wild cucumber store so much resources within their massive tubers? I have no idea. I realize that it is a survival technique, but this is major overkill. No winter is long enough to justify such extreme storage. No summer is dry enough. No wildlife is voracious enough. No forest fire burns the same place more than once in a season. Furthermore, no gardener is diligent enough.
Seriously, these things are impossible to kill. The vines pull up quite easily, with no resistance. The tuber simply makes more. Secondary vines pull up as easily as the first. The tuber simply makes more. No matter how many times the vines get pulled up, the tuber simply makes more. It never exhausts its resources. Removal of the vines deprives it of its ability to accumulate more resources, or replenish what is used to generate the vines, but it has enough to generate vines for many years.
The only way to eliminate these weeds is to dig up their massive tubers, which are fortunately not very deep underground. Even then, the tubers do not die. This one sat around through last summer, and is still viable. I suppose that we should dispose of it with the trash, since we can not compost it.