European wild strawberries probably originated on the woodsy hillsides of mountainous northern Italy and France, where the tribal people who preceded the Romans ate the rich sweet harvest every summer. The plant grew low to the ground, sending out long runners with clusters of leaves which rooted and formed new plants. The European plant was eventually domesticated and remained a favorite of northern growers for generations.
In 1535, several thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean, French explorer Jacques Cartier was noting “vast patches of strawberries” along the St. Lawrence River in Canada. Cartier was on a voyage to find gold, as well as chart territories unfamiliar to the French. English mathematician turned herbalist Thomas Hariot was sent by Sir Walter Raleigh on a fact-finding mission to the Virginia Colony of Roanoke Island in 1585. He wrote of the virtues of Virginia strawberries in his report to Raleigh in 1588.
Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island and a chronicler of local Indian
life, in 1642 described the Indians making strawberry bread from
berries ground with a mortar. Certain northeastern tribes also dried strawberries
for use in winter. These were all probably examples of the Northeastern
berry or F. virginiana.
The Virginia berry’s cousin , sometimes known as the Chilean strawberry , was native to coastal Chile and the west coast of North America. The Chilean plant bore large fruits and had been cultivated for some time by the native Americans of the region. French Captain Frezier, on duty in Chile to spy on Spanish fortifications, was an amateur botanist. Keen on the strawberry plant, alas he brought back only the female plants of the species to Paris and to Brittany, France in 1721 and there they languished, growing green vines but producing no fruit, for close to 30 years. Finally in the 1740’s an unknown gardener planted F.chiloensis next to its American relation, F. virginia . The arranged match worked and the Chilean plant produced fruit.
From this mix came what was called “the pineapple strawberry,” a hybrid
from which the majority of the strawberries on the world market derive.
Canadian strawberry
pickers - early 1900's
Early
1900's "exaggerated" postcard
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