CHAPTER IV 

 ORIGIN AND BOTANY 



THE strawberry has been in cultivation but a short 

 time, as compared with other fruits. It has been grown 

 in gardens less than 600 years and was not cultivated 

 commercially to any extent until the nineteenth century. 

 The garden strawberry of North America was developed 

 very largely in Europe; it is necessary to consider the 

 history of the strawberry in Europe in order to have a 

 fair perspective of its comparatively short career on this 

 continent. 



EARLY HISTORY IN EUROPE 



De Candolle states that the strawberry was not culti- 

 vated by the Greeks or Romans. Columella does not 

 mention the strawberry in his long list of cultivated plants. 

 Probably the first mention of the strawberry in print 

 was by Nicholas Myrepsus, a Greek doctor of the thir- 

 teenth century. Ovid refers to arbutus fructus mon- 

 tanague fragra; and Pliny to terrestris fragris, or ground 

 strawberry. The lines of Virgil, 



"Ye boys that gather flowers and strawberries, 

 Lo, hid within the grass, an adder lies;" 



refer to the wild F. vesca, or Wood strawberry. The straw- 

 berry was first grown in gardens, to any considerable 

 extent, in France. According to E. A. Bunyard, 1 "docu- 

 1 Jour. Royal Hort. Soc., Vol. 39, Pt. 3 (1913), pp. 541-542. 

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