219 



FRAG ARIA, 



STRAWBERRY PLANT. 



[Translator's note: The Strawberry: History, Breeding and Physiology, by G.M. 

 Darrow, an excellent account of the history and varieties of strawberry plants, can 

 be found on http://www.nal.usda.gov/pgdic/Strawberry/darpubs.htm. It includes a 

 chapter on the life and work of Antoine Nicolas Duchesne (1747-1827) who 

 wrote L'Histoire Nature lie des Fraisiers, a description of the botany and the 

 cultivation of strawberry plants in Europe, published in 1766. Duchesne and his 

 work are mentioned several times in the pages below.] 



GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 



THE STRAWBERRY plant deserves a place in the Treatise on Fruit Trees because 

 strawberries are counted among the red fruits & go well with them on the table for as 

 long as three months. 



1°. The strawberry plant is a perennial with leaves that form neither an opposite 

 nor an alternate arrangement, but rather one that's circular or spiral about a stem that gets 

 to be five or six lignes thick & normally grows two or three inches high. With skill they 

 can be grown taller. At the origin of the leafstalk there is a thin transparent membrane 

 that lengthens into a point on both sides forming sorts of stipules that persist after the leaf 

 itself has dried up. These membranes overlap one another & clasp the stem of the plant. 



2°. A bud forms under the axilla of each leaf. Some of the buds are dormant but 

 are always ready to open. Others produce stems or offshoots that resemble the stem from 

 which they originated. Finally other buds form creepers (they're called threads, whips, 

 runners, stolons, filaments, strings, shoots, &c). They're slender, cylindrical, very long, 

 sometimes as much as two or three feet, and have several nodes along them. Each node 

 bears a bud & an ochrea 



