F. Vesca, wild european strawberry

Found growing on neutral chalky-clay, near the old chalk pit in odiham. Tonnes of them, but so tiny! Adorable.

Tastes very strawberry-y but not very sweet. The ripe ones were very soft too.

 

I use alpine strawberries as ground cover and are great to have a few as a treat when watering and they keep producing all year round.

 

do yours spread? ive read the "alpine" ones only clump. lovely idea anyway!

 

I have lots of alpines too, grew them from seed last year with the same aim of providing ground cover. I guess it's too early yet to tell whether they will spread. But I'm getting ripe ones now and it's fun to have a rummage every time I go down the garden.

My grandparents used to grow them along the edges of the paths in their vegetable garden, and picking them is one of my fond childhood memories.

 

Lots of them along the roads here, all at dog piss height though!

 

I've got patches of these and a white variety that I grew from seed and they do spread but not like normal strawberries. I grow ours around our fruit trees as groundcover and they flowered all winter.

 

After three years they really haven't spread much under our old apple tree but have self seeded a bit so have had a few plants to plant elsewhere. Will take some with me for the next garden when we move.

 

We don't know where they came from but we have what others tell us are alpine strawberries. They are now all over the garden and when I mean all over the garden I really do mean that, we spend a lot of time pulling them up. Some do fruit but as we don't know really what they are we haven't eaten any. Should we?

 

I have them. They taste of nothing. Just like strawberries at Christmas. They're a PITA here. They get in everywhere and disguise themselves as potentilla.

 

That's strange because the ones I grow have the most intense strawberry flavour you could imagine and the only time I ate wild ones, it was exactly the same. They make the normal strawberries I grow seem washed out.

 

Maybe mine's a different variety. @Thevictorian .
Apparently, the main consideration when a supermarket chooses a variety is whether they bounce when dropped.Taste is way down the list. Squishy ones taste better - but they get squished

 

@BB3 I grow 6 or 7 nice normal sized strawberry cultivars and I don't think I've ever bought supermarket ones. There isn't much better than a sun warmed ripe strawberry on a nice day down the allotment but the little alpine ones really pack a punch and they thrive in the shade.

 

Vesca grows wild in Finland and is traditionally collected from the sides of ditches and threaded onto a stalk of a suitable grass to carry home (google image)


I grew some from seeds here and they are rampant, excellent mostly evergreen groundcover plants. They spread by offsets, rhizomes and by self seeding and many consider them as weeds. The fruit are unfortunately not that tasty, but given that it's a plant that flowers and fruits for about 9 months a year, all is forgiven. The occasional one here and there is wonderful, but it's russian roulette.

Now I also have a batch of Musk Strawberries (F Moschata) from seed, I trust and believe these are the ones my Grandparents grew and cherished. The fruit were quite small but very intense in flavour.

Remains to be seen as this is their second year and not a single flower so far!

A bit off topic, my friend gave me a brooch as a present this spring.

 

Lovely. Clever idea with the grass!
I believe musk strawberries are dioecious so youll need several plants, but that wont matter if they dont flower good luck this year!

 

Been trying for years to rid myself of this pernicious weed!