WILD STRAWBERRY 



Fragaria virginiana Duch. 



May 

 Roadsides, hills 



This is June in Illinois: sunshine, clover blossoms, 

 souu". It is the time when the new strength wliicli 

 comes to the sunshine begins to bake the soil l)e- 

 twcen rows of growing corn, when soft dust powders up in the road, and 

 the river's level nightly lall.-. It is the time when pink wild roses blos- 

 som fleetingly along the railroad tracks; when the morning knows a 

 stream of blue sjjidfrwort in bloom l)eside the road. June is the renewed 

 sound of insects iu the gra.<s, in the air, in the suusliine, in the night — 

 a humming, churring, i)uzzing, zingiug, clicking, that swells to a cres- 

 cendo as the warmth increa.<es. 



And now June is strawberries. Xow the scent of rijie wild prairie 

 strawberries fills the warm aii- of the sunny roadside. Here are wild 

 strawberries, clover, wheat ; they are j)art of one picture, June. The 

 berries arc small, sweet, ruby fruits in clustei-s on long stems; you piik 

 a stem-full and till your hand with berries. And a meadowlark on a fence- 

 post turns his golden bosom with the bright iilatk \' to the sun and sings 

 and sings and sings. 



The wild strawberries are one of the choice wild fruit.s of Illinois. 

 There is nothing (piite like them, either in aroma or in flavor, and these 

 })rairie fruits are anu)ng the sweetest and most delieious of all berries, 

 cither to eat on the spot or to tiike home to make into ])reserves. 



In ^lay, the compact ])lants sent up ilower stalks with the bright 

 white blossoms with their live ])etals around a stameny center. Quickly, 

 the petals fall and the berries develoj) and ripen when June once more 

 ful tills its ancient j)osition in the cycle of the year. 



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