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When crossing sandy knolls or open, uncultivated fields and pastures, the alluring perfume of the wild strawberry will sometimes lead you to the patch which shows the bright-red little berry on its low-growing plant. It is common everywhere, though it bears the name of wild Virginia strawberry. In Latin it is most appropriately called Fragaria, meaning fragrant.
No such concentrated ambrosia ever graced the feasts of the Olympian gods, for they were restricted to the humble Fragaria vesca, or Alpine species. In discovering the New World, Columbus also discovered the true strawberry, and died without the knowledge of this result of his achievement.
There are but nine distinct species of the tribe Fragaria: one native in Germany, where it is called Erdbeere; two in North, and one in South America; one in Surinam; and one in India; the remaining three being indigenous in Britain, where, besides these three wild species, there are at least sixty mongrel varieties, the results of cultivation; some of which, recently produced from seed, are of great excellence.
The two great species, Fragaria chilensis, found on the Pacific slope from Oregon to Chili, and Fragaria virginiana, growing wild in all parts of North America east of the Rocky Mountains, are the sources of all the fine varieties that have been named and cultivated. Its seeds, sown under all possible conditions, reproduce the parent plant.
This plant has fruited also in England, but doubts are entertained of its being really a fragaria, By Dr. Although the chiefs received us with hospitality yet the mass of people considered our intentions as hostile, and seemed jealous of our intrusion. Of their women however they were not at all jealous, and the familiarity of these was unrestrained.
They are so acrid in their nature as to be altogether unfit for internal use. EUPHRASIA officinalis. EYEBRIGHT. Leaves. It was formerly celebrated as an ophtalmic, both taken internally and applied externally. Hildanus says he has known old men of seventy, who had lost their sight, recover it again by the use of this herb. FRAGARIA vesca. THE STRAWBERRY. The Leaves and Fruit.
This lateral or lineal generation of plants, not only obtains in the buds of trees, which continue to adhere to them, but is beautifully seen in the wires of knot-grass, polygonum aviculare, and in those of strawberries, fragaria vesca.
But we must return to our description of The blushing strawberry, Which lurks close shrouded from high-looking eyes, Shewing that sweetness low and hidden lies. The whole tribe takes its generic name from its fragrance; the word fragrans, sweet-smelling, being that from which Fragaria is derived.
The two species of wild strawberry which figure so frequently in the stories of these early explorers are Fragaria vesca and F. virginiana. From the last-named is derived the cultivated strawberry of Europe. The wild strawberries of North America were larger than those of Europe. Three or more kinds of gooseberry grow wild in Canada, but they are different from the European species.
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