Fragaria vesca / woodland strawberry

Adjectives: clonal, disturbed, edible, forest openings, fragrant, interesting bits, invasive, native, ruderal, seed bank, understory, widespread

Also known as: alpine strawberry, wild strawberry, woods strawberry
Synonym: F. americana

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At the outset, it should be noted that there are two species of wild strawberries in the state and they look very similar. They have an overlapping array of common names which can only lead to confusion of you try to identify them with those. The species I have seen in the Valley is F. vesca, although I admit to not having researched the difference until after the last growing season. I’ll look more carefully sometime. In local nurseries, F. vesca may be labeled “alpine strawberry”, probably because “alpine” sounds more exotic. But there is a species, F. alpina…so even more confusion. Regardless, don’t go buying this plant if you are looking for those big, juicy fruits… this isn’t it.

If you have ever seen a patch of cultivated strawberries, then the wild species are immediately recognizable. F. vesca is a low-growing, deciduous perennial herb. The light green leaves are basal, trifoliate and markedly toothed. The petioles are long, so it isn’t immediately obvious that there are no stems supporting them. Its leaves serve as significant food source for a variety of ungulates, e.g. mule deer and elk.

The flowers of all strawberries are very similar. The inflorescence is a cluster of several hairy, 5-petaled white flowers supported on a green, soft-hairy stalk. This generally lifts them well above the leaves. The flowers are perfect, i.e. having both male and female parts, although one introduced European subspecies has some female-only flowers on some plants. Each flower has 20 stamens. F. vesca flowers early in the season.

The fruit of F. vesca looks a lot like a strawberry, but smaller, ca. 0.5-1 inch long. And, of course, red. They are very fragrant (in a good sort of way), and edible, but a lot of work. Connoisseurs think F. vesca is quite flavorful and a lot better than the bigger varieties usually grown for their fruit (a cross between F. virginiana and a Chilean species … designated Fragaria x ananassa).

We should clear up some terms, however. The red bit is not actually a fruit, but the fleshy receptacle of the flower, i.e. the tissue to which all the petals and sepals and stamens and pistils are attached. The pips that get stuck in your teeth are the actual fruits, and are technically achenes. F. vesca berries have the pips raised above the surface. I promise to get some photos next year, although plants grown in the shade of a forest, for example, may not make fruit. Since many mammals eat those receptacles, the small seeds get spread far and wide.

Despite the fact that the strawberry seeds are viable and can remain so in the soil for some years, they seem to germinate only when the soil is disturbed and away from existing populations. Otherwise, reproduction is by rooting of stolons (runners) or division of rhizomes. In the latter case, the result is a compact crown of multiple plants (illustrated in a winter clump in the gallery). In the former, the colony spreads with clear stem connexions between the plants.

Stolons have nodes (being stems) and they root and new plants arise at every second node. Developmentally, I think this is an interesting and difficult to explain phenomenon, but it is common to the genus. The stolons themselves do not survive the winter. A note here… sold as alpine strawberries, F. vesca is a ground cover and the clonal habit with stolons makes it a pretty good one. But be warned, like all ground covers, it can take over.

Woodland strawberry occurs in a wide range of habitats, but typically along trails and roadsides, on embankments and hillsides, on gravel paths, dirt roads, meadows, forest edges and clearings. Basically, they are widespread except in really wet or dry conditions.

Interesting bits – There is another species that grows throughout the country including Idaho – F. virginiana –  and it looks quite similar and shares several common names with F. vesca. There are two good diagnostic tools for separating them. First, the terminal leaflet. The tip tooth in of this leaflet in F. vesca is about the same size as the teeth on either side, perhaps longer. In F. virgiana, it is smaller and shorter, giving a bit of a blunt look to the leaflet overall.

Even better than leaf shapes, the receptacles/fruits – obviously, only if they are present – are the best way to distinguish the species. F. virginiana fruits look like miniature store-bought berries with the pips buried in the red bit. F. vesca pips are raised above the surface of the fruit, but still buried in the red bits. Like F. vesca, F. virginiana is also quite flavorful but small.

On a different note, F. vesca has been used as a genetic model plant for garden strawberries and for the family, Rosaceae, in general. Indeed, its genome was sequenced 10 years ago when that was still a bit of a trick. The salient features behind this choice are that F. vesca has a very small genome and it is always diploid. It also has a short reproductive cycle (ca. 14 weeks in a growth chamber or climate-controlled greenhouse setting). It is very easy to propagate/clone, so it is easy to get a lot of genetically identical material. The result of this has been an exponential increase in the number of scientific publications on strawberries in general over the last 10 years, and a somewhat improved understanding of disease resistance and stress tolerance mechanisms. F. vesca doesn’t care, but Fragaria x ananassa and its growers (and consumers) do.