Strawberries!!

These wonderful strawberries were about to be picked (by me) at Jones Family Farm yesterday. Delicious! The cultivated strawberries we get at stores or at the farm are an accidental cross that occurred in France many years ago between the small but flavorful native Virginia Strawberry (below) and the much larger Chilean Strawberry. The result is called Fragaria x ananassa.


Here's the native Virginia Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), ancestor to our cultivated berries, purchased from Earth Tones nursery for Eklund Garden. It can be found growing on the slope at Eklund just above and to the right of the cacti. I admit to tasting one of the little berries and WOW, it was amazing.

Here are some strawberries I found in the Shelton open space today along the powerlines. These were also quite tasty. Not sure, but I think these are Woodland Strawberries (Fragaria vesca), native to the western U.S. Or they might be Virgina Strawberries. Either way, they sure were tasty. (I only ate one or two, leaving the rest for the wild critters). They were growing under a mat of cinquefoil.

And here's Indian Strawberry (Duchesnea indica), a fake strawberry originally from India. The berry is dry and feels like styrofoam. This berry was found in Fairfield on May 31 (see earlier post).