92 WILD FLOWER FAMILIES 



Wild Strawberry. The wild strawberry is 

 so universally distributed in open ground and 

 along the borders of woods that we scarcely think 

 of it as a wild flower. Yet the common field 

 strawberry is a native American species, having 

 been described many years ago as the Virginian 

 Strawberry. The first of the familiar white flow- 

 ers bloom early in spring; the full crop of blos- 

 soms appears in May and the fruit ripens in June. 

 The flowers have a delicate odor and are visited by 

 a great variety of bees, flies, and other insects, 

 while the fruit is eaten by many kinds of birds 

 by which the seeds are scattered far and wide. 



Northern Wild Strawberry. In the more 

 northern states a delicate species, sometimes called 

 the Northern Wild Strawberry, is also commonly 

 found. It is much smaller than the other, with 

 thinner and lighter green leaves that have com- 

 paratively few hairs upon their surface. The 

 cluster of flowers rises above the leaves, while 

 the fruit is slender and pointed, the seed-like 

 achenes resting on the surface and not being 

 sunken into tiny pits as they are in the Virginian 

 Strawberry. 



If you compare the structure of one of these 

 delicious strawberry fruits with a blackberry or a 

 raspberry you will see how differently they are 

 made up. In the former the hundreds of tiny 

 seed-like achenes are distributed over the surface 



