A Strawberry Story

With the late spring and summer comes the strawberries, and our region is usually lucky to have an abundant crop. Many years bring weather challenges, but the strawberries are out there and you can find them. Prices ranging from about $2 a quart basket for self picked, up to as much as $4.25-$5.50 at roadside stands.

The history of strawberry cultivation is fascinating. We have all seen and probably tasted the delicious wild strawberries that grow commonly in our fields and yards. These delicious, sweet, juicy, and tiny morsels of goodness have inspired humans to joy and exultation probably since the beginning.

The legends, lore and stories of how the strawberry became so popular is interesting, complex, and echoes the social, economic, and agricultural history of the spread of human culture.

There are a many species of wild strawberries worldwide, with at least two that can be found locally. The Common Strawberry ( Fragaria virginiana) is what we find in our fields and yards. The herbaceous plant has a small white five petaled flower, a three parted leaf, and the familiar tiny red fruit hanging below the leaves. The Wood Strawberry (Fragaria vesca) is somewhat taller and the fruit is often held above the leaves. Both of these are members of the Rose Family of plants (Rosaceae). The flowers open early to mid spring and the fruit can be found in early summer. The plants produce fruits throughout the summer.

One of the earliest written references to strawberries was by Pliny, the Roman naturalist and writer. He mentions that the ground strawberry is different from the tree strawberry. There is not reference to eating the fruit.

The Roman poet Virgil author of the Aeneid, wrote warning children to avoid strawberries because of “serpents that lurk in the grass.”

The Strawberry is a symbol for Venus, the Goddess of Love, because of its heart shapes and red color.

The Strawberry was used by medieval stone masons to symbolize perfection and righteousness. Often strawberry inspired designs were carved into altars and around the tops of pillars in churches and cathedrals.

In the 12^th Century, it was a common custom in Europe to avoid eating strawberries. Saint Hildegard von Binger declared strawberries unfit for consumption because “they grew along the ground where snakes and toads most liked crawled up them.” This admonition became a popular trend in European for most of that century. Because of their color, shape, and juicy plumpness and because of their connection to the ancient goddess of love, Venus, eating strawberries the delicious fruits was considered wicked in certain quarters.

Sporadic efforts of strawberry cultivation began in the 1300’s with plantings of the wild fruits in home gardens. In 1368 King Charles V of France planted his Parisian gardens at the Louvre with 1200 strawberry plants. In the fifteenth century the strawberry was first illustrated in a German botanical volume called “Herbarius Latinus Moguntiae, The Herbal Mainz”. In the book the wild plant is described as a medicine, and not as a food. It is said to help with the appetite and with digestion.

Native Americans were enjoying wild strawberries when Europeans first arrived on the shores of North America. They introduced a bread to Europeans which was baked with cornmeal and crushed berries.

Jacques Cartier traveled to North America in 1534 and wrote about the “vast patches of strawberries” along the St Lawrence River in Quebec. He and his crew learned to eat a lot of wild plants from the natives of the area including white-cedar tea which at one point saved many of their lives. The crew had become famously malnourished and suffered from scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency. A grateful Cartier named the cedar plant (Thuja occidentalis) “arbor de vie” or “arbor vitae”, the “Tree of Life.”

One of the first settlements in North America, now called Portsmouth N.H. was originally called “Strawberry Bankes” because of its abundance of the wild fruit. Settlers in 1630 sailed up the Piscataqua River and built a “Great House” adjacent to a large patch of berries.

English explorer Thomas Hariot found the wild strawberries in Virginia to be larger and more flavorful that the European varieties that he was familiar with and brought plant specimens back to London.

By 1560 the physician to King Henry IB noted that the English ladies enjoyed their strawberries and cream so much that they began planting the strawberries in their own gardens. Today, strawberries and cream are an established English tradition and are famously celebrated at the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament.

Today, in certain parts of Bavaria, country folk still practice the annual rite each spring of tying small baskets of wild strawberry to the horns of their cattle as an offering to the elves. They believe that the elves, who are thought to be passionately fond of strawberries, will help to produce healthy calves and an abundance of milk in return.

Modern Cultivation

Strawberry cultivation and hybridization really took root in the 17^th and 18^th Century. Wild species with large fruits were discovered in Chile in 1712. Amedee Francois Frezier, a French Navel Engineer described the Chiliean berries as “Large as eggs”. He brought them back to Paris. Eventually a Virginia specimen was bred with the Chilean specimen and the rest is history.

The first hybrid strawberry “Hudson” was introduced into the United States in 1780.

By the mid 1800’s there were almost 300 cultivated varieties available around the world and Americans were enthusiastically panting strawberries in their home gardens. Sell

The Name “Strawberry”

According to a variety of sources, the name came about because straw was used freely to mulch the plants during the winter. This practice discourages weeds and lifts the berries up from the soil. When it came time to harvest the berries children would pick them and string the on a blade of straw. At the London markets the children would sell “Straws of Berries”

Don’t forget to support your local growers and roadside stands. Go out today and get some delicious strawberries during this preciously short season.