FRAGARIA COLLINA -THE ALPINE STRAWBERRY. 
Class XII. ICOSANDRIA.— Order III. POLYGYNIA. 
Natural Order, ROSACE/E. THE ROSE TRIBE. 
Stoloniferous leaflets plicate, thin, silky above, pilose beneath, native of Switzerland and Germany. 
Flowers white. Fruit green. Perhaps only a variety of Fragaria vesca. 
The English name strawberry, is believed by some persons to have reference to an old custom lately 
re-introduced, of putting straw underneath the plant to prevent the fruit being soiled ; but it is more pro- 
bably a corruption of stray-berry, from the trailing or wandering of its runners which travel to great dis- 
tances from the parent plants, and establish colonies all around. The word is written strawberry by John 
Lydgate, who died in 1483, in his poem called “London Lyckpenny.” 
Strawberries have long been cultivated to a great extent in the neighbourhood of London, and even in 
what is now the heart of the metropolis. The fact has been mentioned by Hollinshed, and dramatized by 
Shakspeare,that Glo’ster, when contemplating the death of Hastings, asked the Bishop of Ely for Strawberries: 
“ My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, 
I saw good strawberries in your garden there.” 
“The Alpine Strawberry,” says Mr. Keen of Isleworth, “must always be raised from seed, which should 
be sown in a bed of rich earth in spring. When the plants are of a proper size, which will be in July or 
August, I plant them in rows at the back of hedges, or walls, in a rich or in a very moist soil. The rows 
should be two feet apart, and the distance from plant to plant in the rows twelve inches. My Alpines, thus 
managed, bear most abundantly, so much so that in gathering them there is not room for the women to set 
their feet without destroying many. The Alpines differ from all other strawberries in quickness of bearing, 
for no other sort, sown in the spring of the year, will produce fruit under two years, whereas this yields a 
crop at the end of one year. Its duration with me seldom exceeds two years/’ 
Don's System of Gardening and Botany. 
A great variety of strawberries is now cultivated, and there has been much confusion and dispute con- 
cerning the species to which these varieties should be referred. Generally speaking, however, it may be 
said that Fragaria vesca affords the scarlet and wood strawberries; F. collina the European pine, or alpine 
strawberries ; F. elatior the hautbois ; F. virginiana the exotic scarlets ; F. grandiflora the exotic pines ; and 
F. chilensis the chili strawberries. How far the several species of Fragaria enumerated by botanists, may, 
in reality, be reducable to two or three, is not yet determined. 
An account of the strawberries which have been reared in the gardens of the Horticultural Society has 
been published by Mr. J. Barnet in the sixth volume of the transactions of the Society. He divides them 
into — 1. Scarlet strawberries. — 2. Black strawberries. — 3. Pines. — 4. The Chili strawberries. — 5. The Haut- 
bois. — 6. Green strawberries. — 7- Alpine and wood strawberries. We subjoin an account of some of the 
more remarkable varieties, for which we are indebted to Mr. Barnet’s paper. 
The Old Scarlet Strawberry. — This which has been an inhabitant of our gardens nearly, if not 
fully, two hundred years, was -doubtless an original introduction from North America. It is singular that a 
kind of so much excellence, as to be at present scarcely surpassed by an of its class, should have been the 
first known. It continued in cultivation considerably more than half of the period of its existence as a gar- 
den fruit, without any variety being produced of it either by seed or by importation from America. 
This Strawberry has long continued to hold its station in public estimation ; it is deservedly a favourite, 
being considered by many the best and most useful variety, and it will probably not be put aside by any of 
the new productions. It has peculiar merit with the confectioners from imparting to cream, either for ice 
or other purposes, its flavour, which possessing much acidity, is brought out by sugar. It is equally good for 
water ices, and makes excellent preserves, though its colour in jam is inferior to that of some others. There 
are now not less than twenty-six varieties of the scarlet strawberry cultivated in England. 
Wilmot's late Scarlet Strawberry. — Was raised by Mr. John Wilmot, of Isleworth, about the year 1815, 
specimens of the fruit were first exhibited to the Horticultural Society in 1817- 
It is a good bearer, ripening late enough to succeed the old scarlet, and producing its berries in suc- 
cession so as to afford a continual supply. The fruit is very large, bluntly conical, irregularly shaped, 
shining light red ; the seeds are small, deeply imbedded ; the intervals ridged ; the flesh white ; hollow in the 
centre ; the flavour moderate. 
