STRAWBERRY

Vitals

Fragaria ananassa , member of the rose family, Rosaceae.

• Native to North and South America, Europe.

• Early literary reference: Strawberries are mentioned in the writings of the Roman senator Cato who lived between 234 and 149 BC.

• Early cultivation: Native Americans had long been growing strawberries when the Spanish arrived, propagating plants from runners, special stems that "run" along the ground and from which new plants can grow.

• Climate: The plant grows in temperate coastal and inland climes, but it doesn’t like heat.

• Major producing countries: United States, Spain, Korea.

Short history

The wild strawberry long resisted the taming efforts of insistent gardeners. The plant reproduces itself, grows in many unruly directions across a field, and stubbornly sets its rigorous limits on fruit size. Strawberries once blanketed enormous patches in temperate zones of the Americas and Europe, turning the hooves of horses red as they ran through. In seventeenth-century France, Louis XIV’s gardener wrote the first known account of how to grow larger berries in 1697. In the early eighteenth century, an unknown but thoughtful breeder finally crossed the large Chilean strawberries with the smaller, tastier Virginia variety to produce the fragrant and appealing red fruit we eat today. 

Strawberry facts and lore

Some early eighteenth-century French gardeners who planted Chilean strawberries were confounded by the plant’s lack of fruit, despite extensive growth and flowering. The reason: some wild strawberry plants have only female flowers. Without male plant parts to provide pollen, these female plants will produce no fruit.

The strawberry’s genus name, Fragaria, means “fragrant.” Anyone who’s been near the fruit at a farmers’ market can attest to the aptness of this title.

Strawberry shortcake originated as a Native American baked corn bread with crushed berries in it. Colonists substituted the flaky biscuit as their own contribution.

The ancient Romans believed strawberries could cure a variety of ills, from bad breath to liver disease.

Saving the seed

If you’re looking for strawberry seeds, you might be surprised at how hard they are to find. That's because growing strawberries from seed is more work than most people are willing to put in. Strawberry flowers pollinate themselves, which means that continued seed saving would produce inbred plants with disappointing berries. Growers who want to develop strawberry varieties or bring out specific traits need to follow a complicated scheme of hand-pollination. Knowing this, it's not hard to understand why the few strawberry seeds that available are sold largely to commercial growers.

In addition, strawberry plants reproduce via the runners they send out. New plants develop from the runner. So if you want strawberry plants from your neighbor's garden, you're better off trying to get some of these new plants than saving and planting the strawberry seeds.

But for the determined, here are instructions for saving and cleaning strawberry seed:

• Cut the fruit in half and smash it onto absorbent paper.

• Once the paper and strawberry have dried, you can scrape the seeds off.

• Store the seeds in a cool, dry place. They will remain viable for several years.

• When planting, spread the seeds on top of the soil. Don't bury them, because light aids in their germination.

Saving and planting seeds is easy. Make sure that the plants you are saving seed from are what’s called an “open-pollinating” rather than a hybrid variety. For a list of companies that sell seeds for open-pollinating plants, see our article Why Save Seeds?

 

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