1894.] Whence Came the Cultivated Strawberry ? 299 
varieties were obtained,’ one of which fruited in 1836. These 
were the Hovey and Boston Pine. Owing to the loss of labels, 
it is not certain which crosses gave these varieties, but Mr, 
Hovey was always confident that the Hovey sprung from Mul- 
berry crossed by Keen’s Seedling. The Hovey strawberry 
revolutionized strawberry growing in this country. It was to 
America what Keen’s Seedling was to England ; and it marks 
the second epoch in eommercial strawberry culture. American 
varieties now appeared from year to year, and the greater part 
of them have come directly or indirectly from the Hovey and 
the Boston Pine. With the passing out of the Boston Pine 
and its immediate offspring, the term Pine has practically 
been lost to American strawberry literature, and the word is 
but a memory in the minds of the older men ; but this is not 
because the class itself has disappeared, but, on the contrary, 
because it has become the dominant class and has driven out 
the Scarlet and all other competitors. The Hovey was a true 
Pine strawberry. Mr. Hovey grew it in his garden till the 
last, and it was my good fortune to secure a few plants of him 
shortly before his death. A plant is now before me as I write, 
and it has all the marks of the old Pine or Grandiflora type— 
the thick rounded dark leaves, stocky habit, stiff flower cluster, 
and large spreading calyx. All our commercial strawberries 
are Pines, and they compare well in botanical characters with 
the Fragaria grandiflora of the French gardens of a half cen- 
tury ago and with the famous Bath Scarlet and Pitmaston 
Black which were important Pines when Barnet wrote, speci- 
mens of all of which I have before me. 
Our strawberries, then, are lineal descendents of the old 
Pine class, known to botanists as Fragaria ananassa and F. 
grandiflora. Now the question recurs, what is the Pine? 
where did it come from? how did it originate? Three hypo- 
theses, as I have said, have been advanced which an evolution- 
ary review of the subject is capable of considering. Is it (1) 
a hybrid? (2) a direct development of the Chilian straw- 
berry? or (3).a modified form of our big wild strawberry, 
Fragaria Virginiana var. Illinoensis ? 
*Mag. Hort. vi, 284 (1840). Fruits of America, i, 25, 27- 
