4 STRAWBERRIES 
History OF THE GARDEN STRAWBERRY 
Every season, with a regularity that has become quite 
irritating, some one or more persons—and often such as 
should know better—set out to give a history of the 
garden strawberry. The opportunity taken is usually 
that of opening a local flower-show in summer, or the 
holding of the local Society’s Annual Dinner, and the 
whole thing is beautifully simple, for the would-be 
expert states that our wild, wood strawberry (fragaria 
vesca) was the original from which our present race of 
varieties has been evolved. 
Such statements stir up a little patriotic feeling, and, 
in view of what has been done in the evolution of many 
native plants, they have an air of probability, but, un- 
fortunately for speakers and audiences, they are untrue. 
From whence then have come our strawberries ? 
They have come, chiefly, from the intercrossing of the 
Virginian (fragaria virginiana) with the Chilian straw-’ 
berry (F. chiloensis). The latter has a variety (2. 
chiloensis grandiflora) that has had a good deal to do with 
the fine flavour of many strawberries; it is the Pine 
strawberry, a large flowered form that Decaisne con- 
sidered to be of hybrid origin. 
The Greeks and Romans, strangely enough, do not 
seem to have grown strawberries in their gardens, 
though the wild Fragaria vesca is widely diffused 
throughout Europe, and must have been well known to 
them ; and, indeed, Virgil and Ovid both referred to it 
in terms of eulogy :— 
‘¢ Contentique cibis millo cojenté creatis 
Arbuteos foetus montanaque fraga legebant.” 
The old street cry, ‘‘Strabery rype,” at first re- 
ferred to fruit gathered wild, for strawberries do not 
appear to have been cultivated in English gardens until 
