Medieval illuminations of strawberry7/22/2023 All attempts to repeat this success in the Loire Valley, France’s traditional horticultural capital failed and coastal Brittany remained the only place in Europe where the Chilean variety succeeded and became a commercial crop. Why Brittany? It’s because the maritime climate there is very similar to that of F.chiloense‘s coastal homeland, so Breton market gardeners soon noticed that when the new strawberries were close to F. virginiacum or F.moschata the results were erratic and disappinting. Even when the chiloenses were within pollination range of F. The fact that nobody realised all the Fragaria chiloense plants that had been bought back to Europe were female caused some problems! Although it was possible for them to be pollinated by some other strawberry species the commonest sort – F. In later editions he adds more information about its history and habits. It had also reached Chelsea Physic Garden where Philip Miller included it as one of the 5 known species in his Gardener’s Dictionary in 1735. A runner of Fragaria chiloense ended up at Leiden Botanic Garden in the Netherlands, where it was soon christened “Fragaria crassis rugosis soliis flore semine carens” : the “Chili strawberry without blooms or fruits.”. ![]() II, 1755-1760Īs was common for time gardeners and botanists all across Europe exchanged new plants all the time. One of the unknown unknowns for those trying to propagate and cultivate these new introductions was that all of Frazier’s plants were female and thus could not produce berries unless pollinated.įrom Miller’s Figures of the most Beautiful, Useful, and Uncommon plants described in the Gardeners dictionary Vol. Anyway once the plants were safely presented to Louis XIV one was given to the Jardin des Plantes but 2 others found their way to Brest in Brittany, the HQ of the French navy, where Frazier was based and they became the basis for the entire French strawberry industry. To find out more about him check his Wikipedia entry and George Darrow’s The Strawberry, ch.5 (1966). The story of how Frazier’s got his 5 strawberry plants home is a good one – indeed his whole life story is fascinating – even more so because his name is, with good reason, a corruption of fraise the French word for strawberry. [ 1717 English translation of Amadee Francois Frazier’s book A Voyage to the South-Sea. Although it was known and cultivated in the Spanish empire in South America it seems never to have made it back to Europe until it was spotted by Amedee Frazier a young French engineer/cartographer and taken back to France by him in 1714. Sometimes known as the beach strawberry Fragaria chiloensis bought one great advantage the other known species didn’t have: the size of its berries. ![]() The North American interloper was joined about a hundred years later by another from Chile. chiloensis from J.J. Dillenius, Hortus Elthamensis, (1732) So read on to find out more about the early history and imagery of our favourite fruit…įragaria vesca L. In the Middle Ages they were one of the more revered symbols of the Virgin Mary but they also had another more erotic and voluptuous side to them as well.Īs a result although this post started out as a ‘normal’ piece of horticultural history I got diverted along the way with other strawberry-related stuff so its ended up becoming two posts instead! But once they did that’s when British gardeners and nurserymen took over and led the world in developing better and better domestic and commercial – hermaphrodite – varieties.īut strawberries have always had more than just food appeal. ![]() Why not? Because no-one realised that strawberries had sex – let me rephrase that – that most strawberry plants were either male or female. ![]() This species didn’t really reach Britain until the mid-18thc and really didn’t become common in gardens until the 19th. Although there are indigenous European strawberries the ones we eat are hybrids derived from a species from New England and another from Chile introduced surreptitiously into France in the early 18thc. Strawberries are quintessentially English.
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