by Dr. F. Alice LeDuc
Wild Strawberry – Fragaria virginiana
We all, well most of us, enjoy a delicious bowl of fresh strawberries, maybe with ice cream. In spring I start by imagining the small plants making a carpet on the ground bursting with dainty white flowers. Throughout the cooler sections of North America from southern Canada to the northern parts of the U.S., you can find wild strawberries growing in woodlands, meadows and glens. Growing in sun to partial shade in rich loamy soil. As a child if we were up at the Union Creek cabin early in the summer, which didn’t happen often, I would look for the fuzzy trifoliate leaves from the center of each whorl of leaves arose a stem which was terminated with a few white flowers, one or two open and hopefully a few buds. If I found the flowers, I knew that in several weeks there would be sweet, delicious red fruits the size of a pea. Don’t be fooled their fruit is super rich in flavor for its small size. Needless to say, it was always a great treat while hiking to find the rich red strawberries. Of course, today, kids may think the tiny fruits are too much work, picking the little berries takes a lot of time for little reward. Truly not so! Still, have you ever wondered from whence our large yummy strawberries came.
First let’s look at the strawberry plant, it has a group of basial leaves linked by stolons that creep along the ground creating new clusters of base leaves which then root. At times you can find mats of the small plants carpeting the ground. The leaves are trifoliate, that is they have three leaflets that form each leaf. Sometimes the leaves are hairy, at least on the underside, the leaflets are toothed are least the upper two thirds if each leaflet is. The white flowers have five petals and many yellow stamens. Followed by the berries that are aggregate fruits, that is they have a number of pistils that as they mature the fleshy pistil bases coalesce to form the fruit with the seeds on the outside of the fleshy structure.
Now let’s consider how the big fat strawberries came to be. There are two species of the genus Fragaria that were crossed – that is the pollen of one species placed on the stigma of the second species; with fertilization each seed of this cross becomes a new unique plant. Through the selection process by growing out the seedlings, researchers can select for fruit size, sweetness, aroma, etc. So, what were the species of Fragaria that were used to create what we call a hybrid plant? They were F. virginiana and F. chiloensis the first native to the Northern Hemisphere and the latter to Chile and other pacific coast regions. Though also found in Europe the F. virginiana from North America and the F. chiloensis from Chile arrived in Europe in the 1700’s where the hybridization occurred in France. A century later the new hybrids found their way back to North America where these aromatic, sweet, delicious fruits are still enjoyed by all.
If you want to experience the ambrosia of the little native fruits, you need to go hiking in June around here. Or you can find plants for sale in garden center centers or online that you can plant In your garden. Just search for plants of Fragaria virginiana.
