The Strawberry. 223 



that very interesting pond-side plant, the water septfoil, 

 Comartim palustre, sometimes called the water-strawberry. 

 But in this the great torus never advances beyond the 

 spongy and insipid stage, and the seed-like pericarps are 

 packed so closely upon the surface as to form a perfect 

 coat to it. Another very interesting and more successful 

 aspiration towards the idea of the strawberry is seen in 

 that lively little rockery plant, so well adapted for a 

 hanging basket in the greenhouse, the yellow-flowered 

 Indian strawberry, Duchesnea Indica, round crimson fruits 

 abounding upon the pendulous branches almost always. 

 The fruit of the so-called Strawberry-tree, Arbutus Unedo, 

 is quite a different thing, as will be described by-and-by. 

 The pretty little crimson beads of the strawberry-blite, 

 Blitum virgatum, are strawberries yet more remotely, the 

 juicy portion consisting simply of the perianth, which 

 becomes succulent as the minute black seed-like fruits 

 approach maturity. 



In no genus of plants are the so-called "species" more 

 like one another, thus more doubtfully genuine. "The 

 great facility," says Mr. Bentham, "with which fertile 

 cross-breds are produced gives reason to suspect that the 

 whole genus, including even the Chilian Pine-strawberry, 

 may prove to consist but of one species." To refer any 

 particular garden form to its proper "species" is now 

 very difficult, and often impossible. Nearly all of the 

 best cultivated strawberries are of double or hybrid 

 parentage, and the utmost that can be done is to group 

 them somewhat conventionally. M. Jacques Gay, who 



