nichepoetryandprose

Soon, the fields at our summer place will be jeweled with Wild Strawberries.

Wild Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana Duchesne) grows in open woodlands, fields and barrens.  It is also known as Virginia Strawberry, Common Strawberry and, in French, fraisier.   The name Fragaria comes from the Latin word for strawberry, fraga meaning fragrance.

The leaves of Wild Strawberry grow on slender stalks, and occur in threes.  They are hairy and coarsely toothed.   Plants are stoloniferous, meaning they produce ‘stolons’ or runners, freely-rooting basal branches.

The flower of the Wild Strawberry is white, with five petals and numerous stamens and pistils.  Right now, our fields are spangled with them.  The flowers occur in an open cluster of two or more flowers.  In this species, the flower stalk is not longer than the leaf stalk.

The berries are red and ovoid, covered with small pits and seeds.  They are more delicate and sweeter than the domestic strawberry.  They appear in late June and may last until August, but the best berry-picking is at the first of summer.

In the book ‘The Blue Castle’ by Lucy Maude Montgomery, the heroine says one of her greatest pleasures is to eat berries directly from the stem:

Here they found berries … hanging like rubies to long, rosy stalks. They lifted them by the stalk and ate them from it, uncrushed and virgin, tasting each berry by itself with all its wild fragrance ensphered therein. When Valancy carried any of these berries home that elusive essence escaped and they became nothing more than the common berries of the market-place–very kitchenly good indeed, but not as they would have been, eaten in their birch dell …

(from L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle, Chapter 30, McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1972)

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The berries of the Wild Strawberry are delicious in jam.  The leaves also make a fragrant tea, high in Vitamin C.  To make the tea, put a handful of green leaves into two cups of boiling water, steep, strain and enjoy!

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too early to pick

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last week of June

roadside red with leaves

and ripening wild

strawberries hang

still green except

where sepal contrast

shows sweet berry

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patience, wait

a few days and every berry

ripe and a thimble pot

of berry jam

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can’t wait?

sour green flesh

grit of tiny seed

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Copyright  Jane Tims 2012