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.
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.
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 17th and 18th 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.
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”
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