ORIGIN AND BOTANY 117 



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is obscure. At one time it was supposed by some to have 

 been introduced into Holland from Surinam, which is 

 now the coast of Dutch Guinea ; hence it was long called 

 the Surinam strawberry. This can hardly be possible, 

 since the strawberry is not indigenous to that region. 

 Others believed it to be an importation from some part 

 of North America, possibly Louisiana, Virginia, or Caro- 

 lina. One type of Old Pine was long called the Carolina. 

 William Prince, in his "Short Treatise on Horticulture " 

 (1828), says of the Pineapple, or Carolina: "This is a 

 native of our own country;" and in 1832, members of 

 the Charleston (South Carolina) Horticultural Society, 

 spoke of the Carolina as indigenous to that State. No wild 

 Fragaria that resembles the Old Pine can be found in 

 North America to-day. The robust prairie form of the 

 Scarlet, F. virginiana, var. illinoensis, was thought by 

 Decaisne to be the progenitor of the Pine, but the char- 

 acters of the two are so distinct that this hypothesis 

 hardly seems tenable. 



There remain two much more plausible explanations 

 of the origin of the Pine ; first, that it was a seedling of 

 F. chiloensis; second, that it was a hybrid between F. 

 chiloensis and F. virginiana. It is possible that there were 

 two or more forms of the Pine; the one introduced into 

 France about 1750 and described by Poiteau was some- 

 what different from the one introduced into England from 

 Holland and described by Miller. The difference between 

 the Old Pine, the Carolina, the Bath, the Patagonia, 

 Black, and other forms, was so slight, however, that they 

 were all grouped as F. grandiflora by Ehrhart in 1792, and 

 Comte de Lambertye, who reviewed the botany of Fra- 

 garia very thoroughly, considered them identical. 



The hypothesis of Seringe, advanced in 1825, that the 



