White and Greenish 



Distribution — New Brunswick to the Gulf of Mexico, and west- 

 ward to Dakota. 



" Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubt- 

 less God never did." Whether one is kneeling in the fields, 

 gathering the sun-kissed, fragrant, luscious, wet scarlet berries 

 nodding among the grass, or eating the huge cultivated fruit 

 smothered with sugar and cream, one fervently quotes Dr. 

 Boteler with dear old Izaak Walton. Shakespeare says: "My 

 lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, I saw good strawberries 

 in your garden there." Is not this the first reference to the 

 strawberry under cultivation .? Since the time of Henry V., what 

 multitudes of garden varieties past the reckoning have been 

 evolved from the smooth, conic European Wood Strawberry {F. 

 vesca) now naturalized in our Eastern and Middle States, as well 

 as from our own precious pitted native ! Some authorities claim 

 the berry received its name from the straw laid between garden 

 rows to keep the fruit clean, but in earliest Anglo-Saxon it was 

 called streowberie, and later straberry, from the peculiarity of its 

 straying suckers lying as if strewn on the ground ; and so, after 

 making due allowance for the erratic, go-as-you-please spelling 

 of early writers, it would seem that there might be two theories 

 as to the origin of the name. 



Since the different sexes of these flowers frequently occur on 

 separate plants, good reason have they to woo insect messengers 

 with a showy corolla, a ring of nectar, and abundant pollen to 

 be transferred while they are feasted. Lucky is the gardener who 

 succeeds in keeping birds from pecking their share of the berries 

 which, of course, were primarily intended for them, in English 

 gardens one is almost certain to find a thrush or two imprisoned 

 under the nets so futilely spread over strawberry beds, just as 

 their American cousin, the robin, is caught here in June. 



A young botanist may be interested to note the difference in 

 the formation of the raspberry or blackberry and the strawberry : 

 in the former it is the carpels (ovaries) that swell around the 

 spongy receptacle into numerous little fruits (drupelets) united 

 into one berry, whereas it is the cushion-like receptacle itself in 

 the strawberry blossom that swells and reddens into fruit, carry- 

 ing with it the tiny yellow pistils to the surface. 



The Northern Wild Strawberry {F. Canadensis), with clus- 

 ters of elongated, oblong little berries delightful to three senses, 

 comes over the Canadian border no farther south than the Cats- 

 kills. Nearly all strawberry plants show the useless but charm- 

 ing eccentricity of bursting into bloom again in autumn, the little 

 white-petalled blossoms coming like unexpected flurries of snow. 



No one will confuse our common, fruiting species with the 

 small, yellow-flowered Dry or Barren Strawberry {Waldsteinia 

 fragarioides), more nearly related to the cinquefoils. Tufts of its 



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