DOMESTICATION OF F. CHILOENSIS IN THE NEW WORLD

HISTORY OF STRAWBERRY DOMESTICATION

It seems likely that our species, Homo sapiens, has always gathered and consumed strawberries from the wild. Who can walk by a strawberry patch in a forest or field without gathering these succulent berries? In fact, the ease with which strawberries can be collected from the wild may actually have delayed their cultivation until almost modern times. Although our important grain crops were domesticated over ten thousand years ago, the first strawberry species were domesticated in the last two thousand years, and the major strawberry of commerce, Fragaria × ananassa, was born only two hundred fifty years ago.

DOMESTICATION OF OLD WORLD SPECIES

The strawberry was probably grown in Roman and Greek gardens, but there is only limited reference to its cultivation in early writings. Ovid and Virgil mentioned the strawberry in poems, and Pliny lists its fruit 'Fraga' (fragrant) as a natural product of Italy. It seems likely that the Romans cultivated indigenous strawberries, as they spent considerable funds importing a wide array of fruits for their country estates including apples, apricots, cherries, citrons, figs, grapes, peaches, plums and pears.

The first references to strawberry cultivation in Europe appear in the French literature of the thirteen hundreds. Most notably, it is known that King Charles the Fifth had over one thousand strawberries planted in the royal gardens of the Louvre in Paris, and strawberries were grown in four blocks of the gardens of the Dukes of Burgundy. The mother stock for these gardens was most likely collected from the wild, and then propagated by moving runners from established blocks to vacant soil. The popularity of the strawberry steadily grew during the Middle Ages, in spite of a warning from the noted abbess and mystic St Hildegard von Bingen in the twelfth century that the strawberry was unhealthy because its fruit were found near the ground in stale air.

It is known that Fragaria vesca, the wood strawberry or fraise des bois, was widely planted in gardens all across Europe by the fifteen hundreds. Records are common in Renaissance herbals, and after about fifteen thirty there is a clear distinction made between wild and garden strawberries. 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. 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 fourteen eighty-four by Peter Schöffer, a partner of Johann Gutenberg. The inclusion of the strawberry meant that it was considered important to healthful living. The first colour illustration of the strawberry was published in fourteen eighty-five 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'. 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.

Several different forms of F. vesca were identified by botanists in the fifteen hundreds, including albino types and everbearing ones from the Alps. 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'. 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 sixteenth 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 sixteen hundreds.

The musky flavoured Fragaria moschata (also known as hautbois or hautboy strawberry) was also planted in gardens by the late fifteenth 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. Domestication of the hautboy strawberry probably began in the sixteenth century and the earliest cultivars, such as 'Fraisier à Bouquet', appeared in the eighteenth century. The origin of the musky strawberries was initially clouded by Philip Miller in seventeen thirty-five 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. 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. 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 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 sixteen hundreds, 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.