THE SMALL FRUITS OF NEW YORK 357 



since the earliest accounts of edible plants. It is the classical strawberry 

 of Virgil, Ovid, and Pliny who mention it as a wild plant but not as an 

 inhabitant of gardens. There seems to be documentary proof that this 

 strawberry' was cultivated in France as early as the fourteenth century, 

 but it is usual to place its introduction in the fruit garden in the fifteenth 

 centur>^ Certainly Ruellius speaks of it as a garden plant in 1536 as do 

 a half dozen or more other botanists and herbalists of the century as 

 recorded by Sturtevant.' 



There is no dearth of information as to when introduced and as to what 

 the wild strawberry of Europe was at the time of its introduction into 

 European gardens. Sturtevant, who had unusual opporttmities to study 

 the history of edible plants, found many discussions and descriptions of 

 wild and cultivated strawberries in the sixteenth and the early part of the 

 seventeenth centuries. He - gives the following : 



"The strawberry is figured fairly well in the Ortus Sanitatis, 151 1, 

 c. 188, but there is no mention of culture. Ruellius, however, 1536, speaks 

 of it as growing wild in shady situations, says gardens furnish a larger fruit, 

 and mentions even a white variety. Fuchsius, 1542, also speaks of the 

 larger garden variety, and Estinne, 1545, (perhaps also in his first edition 

 of the De Re Hortensi, 1535), says strawberries are used as delicacies on 

 the table, with sugar and cream, or wine, and that they are of the size of 

 a hazelnut; he says the plants bear most palatable fruit, red, especially when 

 they are fully ripe; that some grow on the moimtains and woods, and are 

 wild, but that some cultivated ones are so odorous that nothing can be 

 more so, and that these are larger, and some are white, others red, yet others 

 are both red and white. 



" Cultivated strawberries are also noted by many authors of the sixteenth 

 century, as by Mizaldus, 1560; Pena and Lobel in 1571; and in 1586 Lyte's 

 Dodoens records, 'they be also much planted in gardens.' Porta, 1592, 

 regards them as among the delicacies of the garden and the delights of the 

 palate. Hyll, 1593, says ' they be much eaten at all men's tables,' and 

 that ' they will grow in gardens unto the bigness of a mulberry.' Le 

 Jardinier Soli aire, 16 12, gives directions for planting, and Parkinson, 1629, 

 notes a number of varieties. As to size, Dorstenius, 1540, speaks of them 

 as of the size of a hazelnut; Bauhin, 1596, as being double the size of the 

 wild; the Hortus Eystettensis , 1613, figures berries one and three-eighths 

 inches in diameter; Parkinson, in 1629, as ' neere five inches about;' 

 Plat, 1653, as two inches about in bigness: Vaillant, 1727, as an inch and 

 sometimes more in diameter." 



• Hedrick, U. P. Slurtevanl's Notes on Edible Plants 274. 1919. 

 2 Hedrick, U. P. Ibid. 274. lyi,. 



