When you read the word, “strawberry,” do images of a bright red, heart-shaped fruit come to mind? Do you have memories of U-Pick farms, or pints of fresh sweet berries?  Well, just like me, you may be in for a surprise. The little “seeds” on the outside are a clue, because botanically speaking a strawberry is not a berry. It’s not even a fruit.

Even as a farmer, for years I assumed the name stemmed from the fact the plant is most often mulched with straw to protect the tender buds during cold winters. I also thought that – perhaps – it was the growth habit, the sprawling runners or stolons, and the look and feel in the hand, straw-like.

This year, the UW Farm team will be taking out one plot of annuals in our crop rotation and planting a strawberry patch. While researching varieties last month, I also cracked open a plant science textbook and read it cover-to-cover. Not surprisingly the more I read, the more intrigued I became with Fragaria origins, a plant-smuggling spy, transcontinental travel, development of the US strawberry industry, and its significance in Native American culture.

Not berries, not fruit, native to the Americas 

Whether in a shortcake (Image credit: https://www.savingdessert.com), pie, jam or chocolate-dipped, the high sugar content and aromatic allure have led us to believe that strawberries are a fruit. Botanically speaking, the strawberry is a “false fruit,” or pseudocarp. The “berry” is actually a multiple fruit which consists of many tiny individual fruits embedded in a fleshy receptacle of a flower. The brownish or whitish specks, or visible, “seeds,” are the true fruits, called achenes, and each of them surrounds a tiny seed.

There are over twenty species of strawberry. Strawberry is a member of the Rosaceae (Rose) family and goes by the scientific name of Fragaria x ananassa. The letter “x” in its name indicates that strawberry is a hybrid or cross, in the case of strawberry, of two different species. The origin of that hybridization is very interesting and involves a Pan-American union that occurred in Europe.

According to strawberryplants.org, the first documented botanical illustration of a strawberry plant is believed to be from 1454. However, Native Americans were already consuming native strawberries and using them for culinary purposes prior to the arrival of European colonists. The Image below, right is a Berry basket made by Siagut of Cowlitz/Nisqually. It is believed that Strawberry Shortcake was developed by the colonists by modifying a Native American recipe that created “strawberry bread” by mixing and then baking crushed strawberries with cornmeal.

In Braiding Sweetgrass, the author Robin Wall Kimmerer, writes of the Gift of Strawberries. In creation stories the origin of strawberries is important. Kimmerer writes, “In Potawatomi, the strawberry is ode min, the heart berry. We recognize them as the leaders of the berries, the first to bear fruit.”

According to the Cherokee, the Creator used the fruit as a way to unite First Man and First Woman. And many tribes including Algonquin, call June’s full moon the Strawberry Moon. That’s because the berries ripen and are most abundant in June. The Oneida among others, use strawberry water for medicinal purposes.

Origin of the Modern Strawberry

There are species of strawberry native to temperature regions all around the world. However, it was the union of two species native to the Americas that gave us our garden strawberry. Fragaria virginiana is a species of strawberry native to North America. It is characterized by its highly aromatic berries borne in great abundance but rather small in size. History records date Fragaria virginiana being taken from the New World to France in 1624. The strawberry plants native to North America were superior to all European varieties in size, flavor, and beauty.

As told by Vern Grubinger of the University of Vermont Cooperative Extension in the History of the Strawberry, “By the 1300s the strawberry was in cultivation in Europe, when the French began transplanting the wood strawberry (Fragaria vesca) from the wilderness to the garden.  At the end of the 1500s the musky strawberry (Fragaria moschata) was also being cultivated in European gardens. Then, in the 1600s, the Virginia strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) of North America reached Europe. The spread of this new relatively hardy species was very gradual and it remained little appreciated until the end of the 1700s and early 1800s when it was popular in England. At that time, English gardeners worked to raise new varieties from seed and they increased the number of varieties from three to nearly thirty. See illustration of a seed packet, Fragaria x ananassa ‘Oscar’ circa 1870s. Image credit: Swallowtail Garden Seeds.

Meanwhile, a French engineer and spy Amédée-François Frézier brought the Chilean strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis) from Chile to France in 1714. This species of strawberry had a quality the others lacked: size.  It had fewer but larger flowers and gave rise to larger fruit. However, the Chilean strawberry was not hardy and was difficult to grow inland, away from mild coastal climates. See the plant image from 1716 illustration.

These two New World species of strawberries were crossed in Europe, giving rise to the modern strawberry, Fragaria ananassa. The most significant crossbreeding came in 1765, when French botanist Antoine-Nicolas Duchesne successfully crossed Fragaria chiloensis and Fragaria virginiana. This cross was named Fragaria x ananassa after another fruit from the New World – the pineapple – apparently due to the flavor.

Having now combined the size of the Chilean variety and the sweetness of the Northern American, Fragaria x ananassa quickly became the favorite variety across Europe and remains so to this present day. The English did most of the early breeding work to develop the ancestors of the varieties we enjoy today.  All modern strawberry varieties have descended from this crossing of Virginia and Chilean strawberries. The transition from these native species to modern varieties was a long process, involving the hybridization of the two species, then hybridization of their descendants, and back-crossing to the original parents and selection of plants with desirable traits for further breeding.”

It was not until the late 1700s that garden strawberry made its way (back) to the Americas, and by 1825 strawberry production was well-established in the United States. ‘Hovey’ was the name of the first American strawberry variety that resulted from a planned cross, and it is an ancestor of most modern varieties.  It was Charles Hovey, a nurseryman in Cambridge, MA, in 1834.  ‘Wilson’ was originated in 1851 by James Wilson who selected it from a cross of ‘Hovey’ grown with other varieties. This variety was more productive, firmer and hardier than any other large-fruited variety, and could be grown on nearly any soil. It was also perfect-flowered, so it could be grown by itself without another variety for pollination. Wilson changed the strawberry into a major crop grown all across the continent; the strawberry industry soon increased 50-fold, to one hundred thousand acres.”

Etymology

The strawberry is in itself, peculiar to the English language. The name has a variety of possible origins. Straw was commonly used to mulch the plants during the winter and as weed and soil control to keep the berries cleaner. In London children used to collect the berries, string them on pieces of straw, then sell them at the markets as “Straws of Berries”. The runners which the plants produce are said to be strewn or dispersed around the plant. In some literature the fruit is called strewberry. In Latin the fruit is referred to as “Fragra” or Fragrant. Carl Linnaeus gave strawberry the species name of Fragaria. In French, Italian, and Spanish the fruit is referred to as a “fraise”, “fragola”, and “fresa”, or fragrant berry. The Narragansett Indians of North America called the fruit “wuttahimneash” or “heart berry”.

Modern strawberry cultivars can be classified into one of three different types: June-bearing, everbearing, or day-neutral. June-bearing cultivars respond to the short-days of spring by blooming and setting fruit. They bear their entire crop over a period of from two to three weeks. In contrast, everbearing cultivars produce two crops annually: one in the spring and a second, smaller crop in the fall. Day-neutral cultivars do not respond to the length of day versus length of night. They flower and set fruit whenever the temperature is between 35 and 85 degrees F. Unlike June-bearing types, day-neutral cultivars produce a crop the first year they are planted.

Berry Patch for Cultural Significance and Sustainability 

Washington state has a long history of cultivation of strawberries in agriculture, dating back to the 1830s. Before and after European settlement, tribes gathered wild berries, a significant part of their food culture. Non-Native settlers planted strawberries and blueberries, first in home garden plots and then as part of mixed-crop market gardens.

Beginning in the twentieth century, Japanese immigrants turned strawberries into a cash crop, until their forced relocation during World War II. Filipinos and Native Americans, as well as First Nations peoples from Canada, were called upon to bring in the harvests at mid-century. A community of Finnish immigrants farmed strawberries near the Columbia River until the 1950s. Later, white, Japanese, and Sikh berry farmers in Skagit and Whatcom counties brought in migrant labor from Texas, California, and Mexico. In 2021, the vast majority of Washington-grown berries are shipped out of state to be turned into processed products such as jams, juices, and frozen concentrates, while most fresh berries at grocery stores come from California and Mexico, where varieties with longer shelf lives are grown.

 During the last 50 years, starting in the 1970s, California became the dominant strawberry producer. Its strawberry yield more than tripled between 1974 and 1994. Today, California grows more than 90 percent of the nation’s strawberries. Washington grows about 1 percent. Still, strawberries remain a high-value specialty crop in Washington and the Pacific Northwest. In 2018, Washington harvested 8.6 million pounds of fruit valued at nearly $9.2 million.

With technological innovation and chemical applications, California has held the top position worldwide until recently when China pulled into the lead. When grown as a monoculture requiring chemical fertilizer and fumigants, the sustainability of the strawberry industry is called into question. An article published in Smithsonian Magazine described the toxic rise in fumigants and another in The Atlantic, reveals how all strawberries are coated with poisons.

Many small farms across the nation, meanwhile, grow their strawberries organically, without spraying. There is hope, such as the a new organic breeding program at the University of New Hampshire.

At the UW Farm, we strive for sustainability, not just environmentally but financially and socially. Decreasing our reliance on mostly annuals that need to be continually re-planted, such as lettuce, basil, and carrots, we are shifting towards more perennials, plants that come back year after year. Perennials in general, reduce tillage and soil disturbance. The plants themselves take carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in their roots, stems, and leaves that ultimately feed the soil microorganisms. Perennials have extensive root systems, with the added benefit of storing carbon deeper in the soil where it is more stable. When above-ground parts of a perennial plant are harvested, the plant sheds its deep roots (and the carbon they’re made up of) but retains enough to grow back the following season.

Beyond carbon sequestration and climate benefits, perennial plants can help increase the water holding capacity and reduce the erosion of soils; reduce time, labor, inputs; and improve habitats for invertebrates and small mammals.

As a plant native to the Americas, we acknowledge the history of Native Peoples’ relationship with the strawberry or heart-berry. The west campus farm site was planted with strawberries in 2012, but the planting failed due to poor soil and lack of sun. Having strawberry plants at the main production site on east campus offers sun and more space. Both native cultivars and the modern ‘Tillamook’ variety will be planted this spring, as part of Earth Day activities. This will offer learning (and eating) opportunities for all. And lastly, we will add organic strawberries to our WSDA organic certification and hope to host U-Pick events for our CSA shareholders and the community in June 2026.