198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



You have in America two slightly divergent forms of the wild 

 strawberry, erected into species by American botanists, for small dif- 

 ferences in the appearance of the berry. Had these differences oc- 

 curred in any other than an edible fruit they would, I am sure, hardly 

 have been noticed: occurring there, they have been suffered to assume 

 a factitious importance in the eyes of systematizers. One of these 

 varieties {Fragaria vesca), which grows in fields and open places, is 

 the common wild strawberry of Europe ; but it bears somewhat larger 

 berries with you than with us, and has a somewhat more erect and 

 noble habit. Apparently it is proud of its American citizenship. It 

 is distinguished by having the nutlets merely superficial on the outside 

 of the berry, not sunk in pits, as in the second variety. This last- 

 named form {PI Viryiniana or P\ Canadensis) is peculiar to America, 

 and differs from the European type in the constricted or bottle-shaped 

 neck of the berry, and in the deep depressions for the nutlets, the ribs 

 between which accordingly give the fruit a distinctly pitted or spiny 

 appearance. It is a woodland plant, native to your forests, and far 

 more forestine in aspect and habit than our English vine. In fla- 

 vor, also, it differs distinctly, and your cultivated Virginia scarlets 

 are its final product in the gardeners' liands. The Western variety 

 (Illmoensis), according to Gray, gives origin to Hovey's seedling, 

 the Boston pine, and many other cultivated strains. No European 

 strawberry can at all equal these native American fruits in delicacy 

 of flavor. 



There is a third species of strawberry, undoubtedly distinct, ad- 

 mitted by Gray as a naturalized American, which possesses for me a 

 peculiar interest. This is the Fragaria Indica^ or Duchesnea fraga- 

 rioides, a Himalayan species, established in copses round Philadelphia 

 and at various places in the Southern States. Some years ago a plant 

 of this curious species Avas sent to me in a box for identification : I set 

 it out, on the off chance of its living, in my garden at Dorking ; and 

 it now overruns the whole place, so that I have had abundant oppor- 

 tunities of observing its growth and development to my heart's con- 

 tent. I am certain that P". Pndica is not a true strawberry at all ; or, 

 in other words, that it is not a common descendant with the other 

 strawberries of any original white-flowered potentilla ancestor, but an 

 independent development of the succulent habit all by itself. It has 

 yellow blossoms, a very different calyx, and a most insipid, pulpy 

 fruit. I have not the slightest doubt that this species has been devel- 

 oped from a yellow Indian potentilla, just as our strawberries have 

 been developed from a white European potentilla, by the unconscious 

 agency of birds in dispersing the nutlets. All that the two plants 

 have in common (beyond their undoubted generic potentilla type) is 

 the mere fact of a succulent receptacle, which might just as easily 

 occur independently in the one case as in the other. If I had to re- 

 model the genus Potentilla on my own account, I would certainly put 



