Success with Small Fruits

by Edward Payson Roe

It is the tendency of the present age to ask what is, not what has been or shall be. And yet, on the part of some, as they deliberately enjoy a saucer of strawberries and cream,—it is a pleasure that we prolong for obvious reasons,—a languid curiosity may arise as to the origin and history of so delicious a fruit. I suppose Mr. Darwin would say, "it was evolved." But some specimens between our lips suggest that a Geneva watch could put itself together quite as readily. At the same time, it must be said that our "rude forefathers" did not eat Monarch or Charles Downing strawberries. In few fruits, probably, have there been such vast changes or improvements as in this. Therefore, I shall answer briefly and as well as I can, in view of the meagre data and conflicting opinions of the authorities, the curiosity, that I have imagined on some faces. Those who care only for the strawberry of to-day can easily skip a few pages.

If there were as much doubt about a crop of this fruit as concerning the origin of its name, the outlook would be dismal, indeed. In old Saxon, the word was streawberige or streowberrie; and was so named, says one authority, "from the straw-like stems of the plant, or from the berries lying strewn upon the ground." Another authority tells us: "It is an old English practice" (let us hope a modern one also) "to lay straw between the rows to preserve the fruit from rotting on the wet ground, from which the name has been supposed to be derived; although more probably it is from the wandering habit of the plant, straw being a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon strae, from which we have the English verb stray." Again tradition asserts that in the olden times children strung the berries on straws for sale, and hence the name. Several other causes have been suggested, but I forbear. I have never known, however, a person to decline the fruit on the ground of this obscurity and doubt. (Controversialists and sceptics please take note.)

That the strawberry should belong to the rose family, and that its botanical name should be fragaria, from the Latin fragro, to smell sweetly, will seem both natural and appropriate.

While for his knowledge of the plant I refer the reader to every hillside and field (would that I might say, to every garden!), there is a peculiarity in the production of the fruit which should not pass unnoted. Strictly speaking, the small seeds scattered over the surface of the berry are the fruit, and it is to perfect these seeds that the plants blossom, the stamens scatter, and the pistils receive the pollen on the convex receptacle, which, as the seeds ripen, greatly enlarges, and becomes the pulpy and delicious mass that is popularly regarded as the fruit. So far from being the fruit, it is only "the much altered end of the stem" that sustains the fruit or seeds; and so it becomes a beautiful illustration of a kindly, genuine courtesy, which renders an ordinary service with so much grace and graciousness that we dwell on the manner with far more pleasure than on the service itself. The innumerable varieties of strawberries that are now in existence appear, either in their character or origin, to belong to five great and quite distinct species. The first, and for a long time the only one of which we have any record, is the Fragaria vesca, or the "Alpine" strawberry. It is one of the most widely spread fruits of the world, for it grows, and for centuries has grown, wild throughout Northern and Central Europe and Asia, following the mountains far to the south; and on this continent, from time immemorial, the Indian children have gathered it, from the Northern Atlantic to the Pacific. In England this species exhibits some variation from the Alpine type, and was called by our ancestors the Wood strawberry. The chief difference between the two is in the form of the fruit, the Wood varieties being round and the Alpine conical. They are also subdivided into white and red, annual and monthly varieties, and those that produce no runners, which are known to-day as Bush Alpines.

[Illustration: SEEDS AND PULP OF THE STRAWBERRY]

The Alpine, as we find it growing wild, was the strawberry of the ancients. It is to it that the suggestive lines of Virgil refer:—

"Ye boys that gather flowers and strawberries,
Lo, hid within the grass an adder lies."

There is no proof, I believe, that the strawberry was cultivated during any of the earlier civilizations. Some who wrote most explicitly concerning the fruit culture of their time do not mention it; and Virgil, Ovid, and Pliny name it but casually, and with no reference to its cultivation. It may appear a little strange that the luxurious Romans, who fed on nightingales' tongues, peacocks' brains, and scoured earth and air for delicacies, should have given but little attention to this fruit. Possibly they early learned the fact that this species is essentially a wildling, and like the trailing arbutus, thrives best in its natural haunts. The best that grew could be gathered from mountain-slopes and in the crevices of rocks. Moreover, those old revellers became too wicked and sensual to relish Alpine strawberries.

Its congener, the Wood strawberry, was the burden of one of the London street cries four hundred years ago; and to-day the same cry, in some language or other, echoes around the northern hemisphere as one of the inevitable and welcome sounds of spring and early summer.

But few, perhaps, associate this lovely little fruit, that is almost as delicate and shy as the anemone, with tragedy; and yet its chief poetical associations are among the darkest and saddest that can be imagined. Shakespeare's mention of the strawberry in the play of Richard III. was an unconscious but remarkable illustration of the second line already quoted from Virgil:—