BERRIES AND THEIR NAMES 



The strawberry stands easily at the 

 head of its tribe for beauty, size, flavor 

 and fragrance. It belongs to' the royal 

 family of the rose, and grows wild in the 

 pine woods, showing a dainty cluster of 

 white flowers in early spring, and later 

 on a bunch of exquisite crimson berries 

 of delicate acid flavor. The thick carpet 

 of fallen pine needles keeps the berries 

 clean and dry. There have been two or 

 three theories about the meaning of the 

 name strawberry, but all agree that it 

 comes from the old Saxon word that 

 means to stray oneself, or strew and 

 spread abroad other things. Straw, or 

 the stems of wheat, barley and rye, is so 

 called because of men's strewing or 

 spreading it out in the fields to dry. Some 

 persons suppose the little fruit stalks that 

 hold up the berries came by their name 

 by the resemblance to small straws. Oth- 

 ers attribute it to the habit of spreading 

 straw under the berries in gardens to 

 keep them clean and dry as the pine need- 

 les do in the woods. But most author- 

 ities believe the name comes from the 

 plant's way of growth, sending out "run- 

 ners," or straying by them' from their 

 original place. It is almost impossible 

 to keep strawberries from mixing, no 

 matter how far apart they are planted, 

 and they are not easily kept within 

 bounds, so that they are really stray-ber- 

 ries, or vagrants. Yet there was never a 

 more charming runaway. 



Blackberries and dewberries need no 

 explanation of their names, but we hardly 

 recognize the appropriateness of rasp- 

 berry, as from rasp or rough, since the 

 gardener's art has made them so velvety 

 and smooth. The whortleberry or huckle- 

 berry is said to be a diminutive of a word 

 meaning shrub, and is so called from its 



low growth in bogs and marshes, as well 

 as in woods. Another theory is that 

 whortle is a corruption of myrtle — myrtle 

 berry, a belief which Linnaeus held, as 

 he has introduced myrtle into the Latin 

 name of the bilberry. The different vari- 

 eties of this fruit have many different 

 folk-names — the tangleberry, or dangle- 

 berry, the deerberry, buckberry or 

 squaw huckleberry, the low-bush and 

 high-bush, and the creeping snow- 

 berry. There are almost as many as the 

 names of the wintergreen tribe, part- 

 ridgdberry, bear's grape, foxberry, neal- 

 berry, kiimikinic,- — and for the same rea- 

 son, because beloved and noticed by the 

 common folks, and associated with the 

 animals in their forests. The whortle- 

 berry or myrtleberry is a native of both 

 the old world and the new, and is found 

 even in Greenland and Iceland, where the 

 women make up' large camping parties 

 in summer to gather the fruit. There is 

 a red variety of this tribe, and also a rare 

 white one, but most of the berries are 

 dark blue and are called blueberries in 

 the peat bogs of Scotland. Bilberries are 

 supposed to be a corruption possibly of"* 

 ballberries, from their round shape. The 

 cranberries take their name from the ar- 

 rival of the cranes, ripening as they do 

 in the salt marshes near the sea about the 

 time for the arrival of the flocks of cranes 

 in their annual migrations. No dottbt 

 the rural folks who gathered the low red 

 berries quickly associated them with the 

 time for the harsh cries and grotesque 

 figures of the cranes flying overhead, and 

 such associations have been the origin of 

 many flower names, such as wake-robin, 

 robin plantain, cuckoo-flower, and, oth- 

 ers, as well as the animal names already 

 mentioned. Ella F. Mosby.' 



37 



