ORIGIN AND BOTANY 111 



" Wife into the garden and set me a plot 

 "With Strawberry roots, the best to be got ; 

 "Such growing abroad among thorns in the wood, 

 " Well chosen and picked, proved excellent good." 



At the close of the sixteenth century the Wood straw- 

 berry was common in English gardens, but no varieties 

 had appeared ; the garden plants were transplanted from 

 the wild. In his "Gardeners' Labyrinth" (1593), Hyll 

 says : " They be much eaten at all men's tables in the 

 sommer time with wine and sugar, and they will grow 

 in gardens until the bigness of the mulberry." According 

 to him, the strawberry "requires small labour, but, by 

 diligence of the Gardener, becometh so great that the 

 same yieldeth faire and big Berries as the Berries of the 

 Bramble in the hedge." In Richard III (1597), Shake- 

 speare makes the Duke of Gloucester say : 



"My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, 

 " I saw good strawberries in your garden there ; 

 " I do beseech you, send for some of them." 



Gerarde (1597) enumerates but three varieties, the 

 white, green and red fruited. In 1629 Parkinson wrote, 

 in his "Paradisus Terrestris" : "There be divers forts of 

 Strawberries. The wilde Strawberry that groweth in 

 the woods is our Garden Strawberry, but bettered by the 

 foyle and tranfplanting." He describes the Red, Green, 

 White, Bohemia and Virginia, the latter being "neere 

 five inches about." 



Origin of the name. The wild strawberry, especially 

 the Scarlet, well deserves its botanical name, Fragaria 

 (from the Latin fragro, to emit a sweet odor), although 

 this delightful aroma is sadly lacking in many modern 



