92 WILD FLOWER FAMILIES 
Witp StrAwserRy. The wild strawberry is 
so universally distributed in open ground and 
along the borders of woods that we scarcely think 
of it as a wild flower. Yet the common field 
strawberry is a native American species, having 
been described many years ago as the Virginian 
Strawberry. The first of the familiar white flow- 
ers bloom early in spring; the full crop of blos- 
soms appears in May and the fruit ripens in June. 
The flowers have a delicate odor and are visited by 
a great variety of bees, flies, and other insects, 
while the fruit is eaten by many kinds of birds 
by which the seeds are scattered far and wide. 
NorTHERN WILD STRAWBERRY. In the more 
northern states a delicate species, sometimes called 
the Northern Wild Strawberry, is also commonly 
found. It is much smaller than the other, with 
thinner and lighter green leaves that have com- 
paratively few hairs upon their surface. The 
cluster of flowers rises above the leaves, while 
the fruit is slender and pointed, the seed-like 
achenes resting on the surface and not being 
sunken into tiny pits as they are in the Virginian 
Strawberry. 
If you compare the structure of one of these 
delicious strawberry fruits with a blackberry or a 
raspberry you will see how differently they are 
made up. In the former the hundreds of tiny 
seed-like achenes are distributed over the surface 
