Strawberry
The strawberry is a genus of
plants in the family
Rosaceae, and the
fruit of these plants. There are more than 20 named species and many hybrids and
cultivars. The most common strawberries grown commercially are cultivars of the
Garden strawberry,
Fragaria ×
ananassa. Strawberries are a valuable source of
vitamin C. See
Garden Strawberry for information about the fruit as a food.
Encyclopedia
The
strawberry is a genus of
plants in the family
Rosaceae, and the
fruit of these plants. There are more than 20 named species and many hybrids and
cultivars. The most common strawberries grown commercially are cultivars of the
Garden strawberry,
Fragaria ×
ananassa. Strawberries are a valuable source of
vitamin C. See
Garden Strawberry for information about the fruit as a food.
Morphology
The strawberry is an
accessory fruit; that is, the fleshy part is derived not from the ovaries but from the peg at the bottom of the hypanthium that held the ovaries. So from a technical standpoint, the seeds are the actual fruits of the plant, and the flesh of the strawberry is a vegetable. It is greenish-white as it develops and in most species turns red when ripe.
The rosette growth of the plants are a well-known characteristic. Most species send out long slender
runners that produce a new bud and roots at the extremity, allowing the plant to spread vegetatively. The leaves typically have three leaflets, but the number of leaflets may be five or one.
While the flower has the typical rosaceous structure, the fruit is very peculiar, but it may be understood by the contrast it presents with the
rose hip of the
rose. In a rose the top of the flower-stalk expands as it grows into a vase-shaped cavity, the hip, within which are concealed the true fruits or seed-vessels. In the rose the extremity of the floral axis is concave and bears the
carpels in its interior. In the strawberry, the receptacle , instead of being concave, swells out into a fleshy, dome-shaped or flattened mass in which the achenes or true fruits, commonly called pips or seeds, are more or less embedded but never wholly concealed. A ripe strawberry in fact may be aptly compared to the fruit of a rose turned inside out.
Classification
There are more than 20 different
Fragaria species worldwide. Key to the classification of strawberry species is recognizing that they vary in the number of
chromosomes. There are seven basic
types of chromosomes that they all have in common. However, they exhibit different
polyploidy. Some species are diploid, having two sets of the seven chromosomes . Others are tetraploid , hexaploid , octoploid , or decaploid .
As a rough rule , strawberry species with more chromosomes tend to be more robust and produce larger plants with larger berries .
;Diploid species
...
;Tetraploid species
- Fragaria moupinensis
- Fragaria orientalis
;Hexaploid species
;Octoploid species and hybrids
;Decaploid species and hybrids
Numerous other species have been proposed. Some are now recognized as subspecies of one of the above species .
The
Mock Strawberry and
Barren Strawberry, which both bear resemblance to
Fragaria, are closely related species in the genus
Potentilla is a genus [i] of about 500 species of annual [i], biennial [i] and perennial [i] ...
. The
Strawberry tree is an unrelated species.
Pests
A number of species of
Lepidoptera feed on strawberry plants; for details see this list.
Etymology
The name is derived from
Old English which is a compound of
streaw meaning "straw" and
berige meaning "berry". The reason for this is unclear. It may derive from the strawlike appearance of the runners, or from an obsolete denotation of straw, meaning "chaff", referring to the scattered appearance of the achenes.
Interestingly, in other Germanic countries there is a tradition of collecting wild strawberries by threading them on straws. In those countries people find
straw-berry to be an easy word to learn considering their association with straws.
There is an alternative theory that the name derives from the Anglo-Saxon verb for "strew" which was streabergen and thence to streberie, straiberie, strauberie, straubery, strauberry, and finally, "strawberry", the word which we use today. The name might have come from the fact that the fruit and various runners appear "strewn" along the ground.
Popular etymology has it that it comes from gardeners' practice of
mulching strawberries with
straw to protect the fruits from rot . However, there is no evidence that the Anglo-Saxons ever grew strawberries, and even less that they knew of this practice.
History
Fragaria comes from "fragans", odorous, allusion to the perfumed flesh of the fruit. Madam Tallien, a great figure of french Revolution, who was nicknamed Our Lady of Thermidor thanks to her beauty, used to take baths full of strawberries to keep the full radiance of her skin.
Fontenelle, centenarian writer and gourmet of the 18 th century, considered his long life was due to the strawberries he used to eat.
See also
References and external links
- Darrow, George M. The Strawberry: History, Breeding and Physiology. New York. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966. .
- Listing of Fragaria species, also from a USDA website
