This week: Snacking on Wild Strawberries
Hello!
If you were a kid growing up in a home with an untreated lawn, you likely spent some time picking tiny wild strawberries and eating them in the summertime. These little strawberries were probably Wild Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), a plant native to every state except Hawaii that produces small white spring blooms and edible early-summer fruit. Having Wild Strawberries spread throughout your lawn is one of the benefits of skipping the weed-and-feed, as they make ecologically-unfriendly turfgrass more attractive to pollinators. Wild Strawberries also support more than 80 species of caterpillars.
Wild Strawberry plants grow less than a foot high and spread through stolons, seeds, and rhizomes, making it an effective weed suppressant between taller perennials and shrubs. They also make an excellent mass-planted groundcover. Wild Strawberries are so versatile that they tolerate dry or moist soil, thrive in sandy, rocky spots, and even work well on sun-drenched slopes or shady spaces. They are an all-around winner for protecting soil and reducing the reliance on conventional mulch.
Shopping for Wild Strawberry Plants
Because many people see Wild Strawberries as weeds, they are difficult to buy outside of specialized native plant nurseries or plant sales. If you spot them growing in your lawn, dig some up and transplant them (mine were courtesy of my parents’ yard). If you’re buying from a native plant nursery, bare-root plants are available in the spring, and potted plants are sold all season long. While the plant will re-seed, starting Wild Strawberries from seed at home isn’t easy. If you can’t find straight species natives, you can always buy strawberry plants from the veggie garden section of your nursery and plant those instead—they are a hybrid of our native strawberry and a South American species.
Wild Strawberry Imitators
Watch out for imitators when scouting for Wild Strawberries in your friends’ and family’s yards. A handful of lookalikes exist, especially when the plant is not in flower. One of these is Mock Strawberry (Potentilla indica). It has yellow flowers, flavorless red berries, and leaves similar to Wild Strawberry plants. However, Mock Strawberry is non-native and has few ecosystem benefits.
Another foliage lookalike is Barren Strawberry (Waldsteinia fragarioides). It has yellow flowers, but lacks strawberry-like fruits. Unlike Mock Strawberry, Barren Strawberry is a beneficial native plant. So, if you find some, collect it and transplant it as if it were a Wild Strawberry.
Elsewhere:
Book recommendation time! If you’re interested in plant history or how native plants were used medicinally, check out The Earthwise Herbal: A Complete Guide to New World Medicinal Plants. While I can’t vouch for the veracity of the medical claims or the safety of the recipes, it is a fascinating encyclopedia of native plant uses outside the pollinator garden.
Have a great week,
Julie