248 



THE ROSE FAMILY. 

 VI. STRAWBERRY. FRAGAEIA. 



Habit, foliage, and flowers of Fotentil, but the fruit is succulent, 

 formed of the enlarged succulent receptacle, studded on the outside 

 with the numerous minute, 1-seeded carpels, looking like seeds. 



A genus spread over nearly the whole of the northern hemisphere 

 without the tropics, where it consists, perhaps, but of a single species, 

 and represented again by a nearly allied but possibly distinct species 

 in southern extratropical America. 



1. Common Strawberry. Fragaria vesca, Linn. (Fig. 300.) 



(Eng. Bot. t. 1524, and Suppl. t. 2742. Strawberry.) 



A short, perennial, tufted stock often 

 emits slender runners, rooting and form- 

 ing new plants at every node. Leaves 

 mostly radical, more or less clothed with 

 soft, silky hairs, consisting of 3 ovate, 

 toothed leaflets at the end of a long 

 leafstalk. Flower-stems radical, erect, 

 leafless, or with 1 or 2 usually undivided 

 leaves, 3 to 6 inches high or rarely more, 

 bearing a small number of pedicellate 

 white flowers. Fruit usually red. 



In woods, bushy pastures, and under 

 hedges, throughout Europe and Eussian 

 and central Asia, and in northern Ame- 

 rica, extending to the Arctic regions. 

 Abundant in Britain. Fl. nearly the 

 whole season. The Hautboy, a rather 

 taller variety, with fewer runners and 

 flowers, usually entirely or partially uni- 

 sexual, has been distinguished as a 

 species under the name of F. elatior (Eng. Bot. t. 2197) ; and several 

 other wild or cultivated varieties have been proposed as species, but 

 the great facility with which fertile cross-breeds are produced, gives 

 reason to suspect that the whole genus, including even the Chilian 

 Fine Strawberry, may prove to consist but of one species. 



Fig. 306. 



VII. POTENTIL. POTENTILLA. 



Herbs, with a perennial, tufted stock, and occasionally a creeping 

 rootstock or runners. Flowering stems usually annual, often very 



