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Open my wish list →A strawberry is not quite what it seems. Here are three true things about the fruit and its name.
Each tiny seed you can see on the outside of a strawberry is really an achene. An achene is a botanical fruit with a seed inside it.
SourceBotanically, the strawberry is not a berry, but an aggregate accessory fruit. Its fleshy part comes from the receptacle.
SourceIn 1759, the garden strawberry was recorded in Chelsea, England, as the pine strawberry. Both 'pine' and its Latin name 'ananassa' meant pineapple, for the fruit's flavour.
SourceA French garden
The garden strawberry was first bred in Brittany, France, in the 1750s. It came from a cross of two wild strawberries: the Virginia strawberry from eastern North America, and the Chilean strawberry. Amédée-François Frézier brought the Chilean strawberry from Chile in 1714. At first, the Chilean plants grew strongly in Europe but gave no fruit. Then, in the 1750s, gardeners in Brittany noticed that the Chilean plants had only female flowers. They planted wild woodland strawberries among them to give pollen, and the Chilean plants bore lots of fruit. In 1766, in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, Antoine Nicolas Duchesne found that the garden strawberry was a hybrid of the Chilean and Virginia strawberries.
SourceIn stories and pictures
Strawberries have appeared in books and art since Roman times. The Roman poet Ovid wrote that in a Golden Age long ago, people lived on wild fruits such as mountain strawberries. In pictures from the Middle Ages, the strawberry often appears in the Virgin Mary's garden. In the Madonna of the Strawberries, she sits on a strawberry bed, garlanded with strawberry leaves. These old writings and pictures are about wild strawberries. Much later, in 1806, Michael Keens of Isleworth, England, chose a garden strawberry called Keens Imperial from many hybrids, winning the Royal Horticultural Society's Silver Cup.
SourceFragaria vesca
Also called the woodland or alpine strawberry, it grows naturally throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere, typically along trails and roadsides. It spreads mostly by runners and has soft, hairy white flowers. People have eaten it since the Stone Age.
SourceFragaria virginiana
The Virginia strawberry is native to North America. It has a white flower with five petals and spreads by runners. Its fruit is smaller than the garden strawberry, and it is one of the two wild species crossed to create the garden strawberry.
SourceFragaria chiloensis
Also called the Chilean strawberry, it grows naturally on the Pacific coasts of North and South America, and in Hawaii, mostly on sandy beaches above the tide. Its thick leaves are glossy green, and its fruit is red on the surface and white inside.
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