SC - Strawberries

[Christina M. Krupp]

> > Before contact with the New World, the European Strawberry was a tiny, 
> > tasty, seedy fruit, not much bigger than our wild strawberries or field 
> > strawberries -- the ones that are about a third to a half an inch in 
> > diameter. 
> 
> Would this be the 'alpine' strawberry I see advertised in the seed catalogs?  
> The are often advertised for ornamental use.  As I understand, the alpine 
> strawberry is not spread by runners like our modern strawberry.
 

OK, since you asked, here's more about strawberries! 

The ubiquitous little European wood strawberry mentioned above is Fragaria
vesca. It was widespread on the European continent and in the British
Isles.  Our American tiny field strawberry is a variety of that, Fragaria
vesca americana. (I didn't know that before; I just looked it up. Neat!) 
  
The Alpine strawberry, sometimes called the Alpine Hautbois variety, is a
different species entirely; several varieties have been developed and 
I'm not sure which one you've seen. (Technically, this species is 
 F. eliator; it may also go by the Latin names of F. moschata Duchesne or
F. magna Thuill.) They prefer high altitudes and could have been gathered
wild in the mountains of Germany, Switzerland, and France (not England,
until they were imported in the 1600's.) Early botanists attempting to 
domesticate the Alpine strawberries found that they were fussy and 
unsuccessful when cultivated. (I would hope that modern varieties of 
Alpine strawberry being sold have overcome that trait!) Of course, in 
medieval Europe this variety would have been readily available to 
mountain dwellers, regardless of their cultivatibility.

I hope that helps!

Marieke