Fragaria vesca, commonly called the woodland strawberry, Alpine strawberry, wild strawberry, Carpathian strawberry or European strawberry, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the rose family that grows naturally throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere, and that produces edible fruits.
The Latin specific epithet vesca literally means "thin" or "feeble", but likely carries the sense "edible" in this context (compare vescor, "to eat").
Description
Five to eleven soft, hairy white flowers are borne on a green, soft fresh-hairy 3–15 centimetres (1–6 in) stalk that usually lifts them above the leaves. The light-green leaves are trifoliate (in threes) with toothed margins. The plant spreads mostly by means of runners (stolons), but the seeds are viable and establish new populations.
Its fruit persists for an average of 1.2 days, which is possibly the shortest persistence of any fleshy fruit in Europe. It bears an average of 46.8 seeds per fruit, which is possibly the highest per fruit of any in Europe. Fruits average 84.0% water, and their dry weight includes 21.0% carbohydrates and 5.5% lipids, one of the higher lipid values among European fleshy fruits.
Taxonomy
Vilmorin-Andrieux (1885) makes a distinction between wild or wood strawberries (Fragaria vesca) and alpine strawberries (Fragaria alpina), a distinction which is not made by most seed companies or nurseries, which usually sell Fragaria vesca as "alpine strawberry".
Under wild or wood strawberry, Vilmorin says:
Under alpine strawberry, Vilmorin says:
A very different plant to the Wood Strawberry, and distinguished by the greater size of all its parts — the fruit in particular — and especially by the property (which is particular to it) of producing flowers and fruit continuously all through the summer. ... The fruit has nearly the same appearance and flavour as that of the Wood Strawberry, but is generally larger, longer, and more pointed in shape. The seed is...
