Strawberry
| Strawberry Fragaria × ananassa | |
|---|---|
| Strawberry fruit | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Tracheophytes |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Eudicots |
| Clade: | Rosids |
| Order: | Rosales |
| Family: | Rosaceae |
| Genus: | Fragaria |
| Species: | F. × ananassa
|
| Binomial name | |
| Fragaria × ananassa | |
The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; Fragaria × ananassa)[1] is a widely grown hybrid plant cultivated worldwide for its fruit. The genus Fragaria, the strawberries, is in the rose family, Rosaceae. The fruit is appreciated for its aroma, bright red colour, juicy texture, and sweetness. It is eaten either fresh or in prepared foods such as jam, ice cream, and chocolates. Artificial strawberry flavourings and aromas are widely used in commercial products. Botanically, the strawberry is not a berry, but an aggregate accessory fruit. Each apparent 'seed' on the outside of the strawberry is actually an achene, a botanical fruit with a seed inside it.
The garden strawberry was first bred in Brittany, France, in the 1750s via a cross of F. virginiana from eastern North America and F. chiloensis, which was brought from Chile by Amédée-François Frézier in 1714. Cultivars of F. × ananassa have replaced the woodland strawberry F. vesca in commercial production. In 2023, world production of strawberries exceeded ten million tons, led by China with 40% of the total.
Strawberries have appeared in literature and art from Roman times; Virgil wrote about the snake lurking beneath the strawberry, an image reinterpreted by later writers including Shakespeare. Strawberries appear in Italian, Flemish, and German paintings, including Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. It has been understood to symbolise the ephemerality of earthly joys or the benefit that blessed souls get from religion, or to allegorise death and resurrection. By the late 20th century, its meaning had shifted: it symbolised female sexuality.
Evolution
History and taxonomy
In Europe, until the 17th century cultivated plants were obtained by transplanting strawberries from the forests; the plants were propagated asexually by pegging down the runners, allowing them to root, and then separating the new plants.[2] F. virginiana, the Virginia strawberry, was brought to Europe from eastern North America; F. chiloensis, the Chilean strawberry, was brought from Chile by Amédée-François Frézier in 1714. At first introduction to Europe, the Chilean strawberry plants grew vigorously, but produced no fruit. French gardeners in Brittany in the 1750s noticed that the Chilean plants bore only female flowers. They planted the wild woodland strawberry F. vesca among the Chilean plants to provide pollen; the Chilean strawberry plants then bore abundant fruits.[3]
In 1759, Philip Miller recorded the 'pine strawberry' (F. ananassa) in Chelsea, England.[3] In the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, France, Antoine Nicolas Duchesne found in 1766 that F. ananassa was a hybrid of the recently arrived F. chiloensis and F. virginiana.[1] In 1806, Michael Keens of Isleworth, England selected the Keens Imperial cultivar from many hybrids,[4] winning the Royal Horticultural Society's Silver Cup.[3] Both the names 'pine' and 'ananassa' meant "pineapple", for the fruit's flavour.[4] Modern strawberries and both parent species are octoploid (8N, meaning they have 8 sets of 7 chromosomes).[5] The genome sequence of the garden strawberry was published in 2019.[6]
Further breeding in the following centuries produced varieties with a longer cropping season and more fruit.[3] During the Green Revolution of the 1950s, agronomists used selective breeding to expand phenotypic diversity of the garden strawberry. Adoption of perpetual flowering hybrids not sensitive to changes in photoperiod gave higher yields and enabled production in California to expand.[1]
-
Fragaria vesca, a wild woodland strawberry, was cultivated until the 17th century.
-
Antoine Nicolas Duchesne discovered that the cultivated strawberry ('Gariguette' pictured) was a hybrid of F. chiloensis and F. virginiana.[1]
Phylogeny
The phylogeny of the cultivated strawberry within the genus Fragaria of the Rosaceae family was determined by chloroplast genomics in 2021. The polyploidy (number of sets of chromosomes) is shown as "2N" etc. by each species.[7]
| Rosaceae |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Description
In culinary terms, a strawberry is an edible fruit. From a botanical point of view, it is not a berry but an aggregate accessory fruit, because the fleshy part is derived from the receptacle. Each apparent seed on the outside of the strawberry is actually an achene, a botanical fruit with a seed inside it.[8]
-
Leaves
-
Flower
-
Achenes (botanical fruits)
-