1922).
It is known that Fragaria vesca, the wood strawberry or fraise des bois, was widely planted in gardens all across Europe by the 1500s. Records are common in Renaissance herbals, and after about 1530 there is a clear distinction made between wild and garden strawberries (Sauer, 1993). The wood strawberry was grown not only for private consumption, but for market as well. In fact, the strawberry may have got its name from the activities of street vendors who strung the berries on straws of grass or hay to take to market (Darrow, 1966; Wilhelm and Sagen, 1974). Another possible origin of the name relates to its ripening at the same time as hay, as streaw is the Anglo-Saxon word for hay. Most likely, strawberries were named after the way the runners ‘strew’ or scatter around the mother.
The first printed illustration of the strawberry is found in the Herbarius Latinus Moguntiae published in 1484 by Peter Schöffer, a partner of Johann Gutenberg (Leyel, 1926). The inclusion of the strawberry meant that it was considered important to healthful living. The first colour illustration of the strawberry (Fig. 2.1) was published in 1485 in the German edition of Schöffer’s book titled Herbarius zu Teutsch or Gart der Gesundheit, meaning literally ‘Garden of Good Health’. This book ‘occupied a place unsurpassed in German natural history for more than a half century’ (Wilhelm and Sagen, 1974). In fact, the strawberry was grown widely in apothecary gardens all across Europe. All parts of the plants were used in medicinal teas, syrups, tinctures and ointments. Strawberry concoctions were used for skin irritations and bruises, bad breath, throat infections, kidney stones, broken bones and many other injuries.
Fig. 2.1. Earliest colour illustration of the strawberry, printed by Peter Schöffer in 1485.
Several different forms of F. vesca were identified by botanists in the 1500s, including albino types and everbearing ones from the Alps (F. vesca ‘Semperflorens’). Some of the earliest cultivars were everbearing including ‘Fraisier de Bargemont’ from France, ‘Haarbeer’ and ‘Brösling’ (‘Pressling’) from Germany and ‘Capiton’ from Belgium. Most of these varieties were likely selected from the wild, except ‘Capiton’, which may have been derived from ‘Haarbeer’ (Wilhelm and Sagen, 1974). Fruit of all these varieties was pale coloured and only the early developing fruit had large size. Much redder ‘Capiton’ plants with improved fruit size began to appear in the 16th century and they supplanted the white forms. Much like today, fruit from these early varieties were served with cream, soaked in wine or covered with powdered sugar. Strawberry jelly appeared in the 1600s (Wilhelm and Sagan, 1974).
The musky flavoured Fragaria moschata (also known as hautbois or hautboy strawberry) was also planted in gardens by the late 15th century, together with the green strawberry, Fragaria viridis. F. viridis was used solely as an ornamental throughout Europe, whereas F. moschata was utilized for its fruit by the English, Germans and Russians. The French largely scorned it (Duchesne, 1766). Domestication of the hautboy strawberry probably began in the 16th century (Sauer, 1993) and the earliest cultivars, such as ‘Fraisier à Bouquet’, appeared in the 18th century. The origin of the musky strawberries was initially clouded by Philip Miller in 1735 when he improperly suggested in his influential series The Gardeners Dictionary that they came from the New World, but in fact they were of European origin (Wilhelm and Sagen, 1974). The name ‘hautboy’ was apparently an English spelling of the French haut bois (high [fruiting] woods [strawberry]).
Hautboy fruit varied from red to rose-violet and were borne on trusses extending above the leaves. Their flavour has been described as a mixture of honey and musk (Wilhelm and Sagen, 1974). Hautboy strawberries initially fell into disrepute, as the earliest types were dioecious, leading to poor production when only one gender was planted, but the great French botanist Duchesne (1766) discovered that interplanting pistillate plants with good pollen producers of other F. moschata or Fragaria virginiana yielded good crops. Regardless of this, perfect-flowered types were soon developed.
By the 1600s, the culture of the native European strawberries was widely practised and well refined. Many of our modern practices had already been developed including frequent establishment of beds to maintain high plant vigour, the use of raised beds in areas with poor drainage and the application of mulch to protect against winter cold. Fruit size was maximized by early planting dates, optimal plant spacing, elimination of the first flower trusses and removal of all but the first three or four flowers in a cluster. Europeans had become expert strawberry growers and the stage was set for the rapid acceptance of a new, highly promising horticultural type from the New World, F. virginiana.
DOMESTICATION OF THE SCARLET STRAWBERRY, F. VIRGINIANA
The wood strawberry, F. vesca, dominated strawberry cultivation in Europe for centuries, until F. virginiana from Canada and Virginia began to replace it in the 1600s. All of the clones that found their way to Europe were wild in origin, as the aboriginal peoples of North America did little gardening with strawberries. They enjoyed the fruit both fresh and in cornmeal bread (Wilhelm and Sagen, 1974; Sauer, 1993) but the natural abundance of the strawberry had generated little stimulus for domestication in the New World.
The exact particulars of the entry of F. virginiana into Europe are unknown, but it had certainly arrived in both France and England by the late 1500s, and new importations occurred regularly over the next 150 years. Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of the St Lawrence River of Canada in 1534, was probably the first to bring F. virginiana to the Old World. There are no specific records of its introduction by him, but Cartier made numerous mentions of it in his diary and he was known to have introduced other Canadian plants (Wilhelm and Sagen, 1974). The first published reference to the strawberry of Canada was in the garden catalogue of Robins, the botanist to Henri IV of France. He and his brother first reported it in 1624, but it is likely that they planted it long before then, as they were active importers of plants from throughout the world.
The Canada strawberry, then known primarily as Fragaria americana but now called F. virginiana, rapidly spread to gardens across France and all of Europe (Wilhelm and Sagen, 1974). It was incorporated in 1636 into the huge Jardin Royal des Herbes Mèdecinales of Guy de La Brosse, physician to Louis XIII. In 1633 it had appeared in a catalogue of Canadian exotics written by Giovanni Battista Ferrari, a professor of Hebrew at the Collegio Romano in Rome. The noted apothecary Jean Hermans was growing the Canada strawberry in his garden in Brussels by 1652, and numerous English herbalists and horticulturalists were raising it by the early 1600s, including John Tradescant and John Parkinson. At least nine different accessions of F. virginiana were being grown in Europe by 1650.
Although the first strawberries
