Rosaceae / Fragaria spp. / Wild Strawberry / maʔá:laŋeʔ (Mah-ah-la-nge')

Anytime one happens to stumble upon these delicacies, it is a cause for celebration. Arguably the rarest fruit of the forest, from a plant which, by many accounts, is one of the most common. While I’ve always chalked this up to their heavenly taste…a bear’s gotta eat too…I recently found out that they also have one of the shortest persisting fruits at an average of 1.2 days for F. vesca (Ehrlen 1991). Interestingly enough, they also bear one of the highest amount of seeds per fruit, coming in at 46.8!

As a whole, the wild plants closely resemble their cultivated cousins. Highly prostrate, they have thin, basal leaves, usually occurring in leaflets of three upon a petiole. Underneath the foliage, you can find their distinct above-ground root systems, known as stolons, which are also an excellent means of propagation should you find yourself in a reciprocal mood. Flowers are distinctly Strawberry and have 5 white petals with numerous pistils and stamens contained within the interior. With the petals, they have five unlobed bractlets. The flower eventually matures into a red, fleshy, aggregate accessory fruit. Wait…I thought Strawberries were…a berry?

An aggregate fruit is that which is formed from the ripened ovaries in one flower with multiple carpels. Other common cultivated examples are Raspberries, Mulberries and Blackberries. Conversely, simple fruits develop from a single ovary. An accessory fruit is a fruit that contains tissue derived from plant parts other than the ovary. In strawberries, the receptacle tissue and ovary wall tissue form the fruit. In contrast, true fruit forms exclusively from the ovary of the flower.

Although their size typically maxes out at only a fraction of those in a cultivated strawberry, these fruits are small but mighty! Taste is far beyond that of the typical garden specimen and the ones we’ve found have never made it out of the field. Often an afterthought, the leaves make an excellent astringent tea which is also a tonic and nervine.