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9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
I’m right with you! 
Good little e-book from 1966 on strawberries. Very interesting:
THE STRAWBERRY
History, Breeding and Physiology
BY GEORGE M. DARROW
Link for download: http://specialcollections.nal.usda.gov/speccoll/collectionsguide/darrow/Darrow_TheStrawberry.pdf
(515 page PDF)
From PDF page 31:
THE HISTORY of the strawberry goes back as far as the Romans and perhaps
even the Greeks, but because the fruit has never been a staple of agriculture
it is difficult to find ancient references to it. Theophrastus, Hippocrates,
Dioscorides and Galen did not even mention it; nor did Cato, Varro,
Columella or Palladius, the four Latin writers on agriculture. Apulius
cited the strawberry only for its medicinal value. Although Virgil and Ovid
did name the strawberry in their verses, they did so only casually in poems
of country life where they associated it with other wild fruits. Virgil, for
example, included the strawberry among the beauties of the field in his
Third Ecologue where the shepherd, Damoetas, is warned:
Ye boys that gather flowers and strawberries
Lo, hid within the grass an adder lies.
Ovid mentioned it twice, once in his description of the Golden Age from
Book One of the Metamorphoses as "Arbuteas foetus, monatanaque fraga
legebant,,, (They gathered Arbutus berries and mountain strawberries).
Later, in the thirteenth book of the same work, Polyphemus, Galatea's
rebuked lover, sings to her of the settlement he wants to make with her:
With thine own hands thou shalt thyself gather the soft strawberries
growing beneath the woodland shade.
Pliny (23-79 A.D.) was the last known writer for many centuries to mention
the strawberry. In the twenty-first book of his Natural History, he listed
"Fraga," the fruit of the strawberry, as one of the natural products of Italy.
even the Greeks, but because the fruit has never been a staple of agriculture
it is difficult to find ancient references to it. Theophrastus, Hippocrates,
Dioscorides and Galen did not even mention it; nor did Cato, Varro,
Columella or Palladius, the four Latin writers on agriculture. Apulius
cited the strawberry only for its medicinal value. Although Virgil and Ovid
did name the strawberry in their verses, they did so only casually in poems
of country life where they associated it with other wild fruits. Virgil, for
example, included the strawberry among the beauties of the field in his
Third Ecologue where the shepherd, Damoetas, is warned:
Ye boys that gather flowers and strawberries
Lo, hid within the grass an adder lies.
Ovid mentioned it twice, once in his description of the Golden Age from
Book One of the Metamorphoses as "Arbuteas foetus, monatanaque fraga
legebant,,, (They gathered Arbutus berries and mountain strawberries).
Later, in the thirteenth book of the same work, Polyphemus, Galatea's
rebuked lover, sings to her of the settlement he wants to make with her:
With thine own hands thou shalt thyself gather the soft strawberries
growing beneath the woodland shade.
Pliny (23-79 A.D.) was the last known writer for many centuries to mention
the strawberry. In the twenty-first book of his Natural History, he listed
"Fraga," the fruit of the strawberry, as one of the natural products of Italy.
and, PDF page 32:
England, too, was an early admirer of the strawberry. The Reverend
John Earle compiled a list of early plant names from old lists appearing in
documents and vocabularies between the tenth and the end of the fifteenth
centuries. The successive modifications of the name from "Streowberige,
Strea Berige, Streowberge, Streaw Berian Wisan, Streberi Lef,,, to "Strebere-
Wyse" and "Strawberry" show a long familiarity with it there. The last
name came from "A Pictorial Vocabulary of the Latter Part of the Fifteenth
Century." The Anglo-Saxon word streow meant hay. According to one
theory, the Anglo-Saxons in A.D. 900 called the strawberry the "hayberry"
because it ripened at the time the hay was mown. Another guess is that the
name derived from the way children strung the berries on straws of grass
or hay to sell, a custom still practiced in parts of Ireland today. A more likely
explanation is that the Anglo-Saxons used the name "strawberry" to describe
the way the runners strew or stray away from the mother plant to find
space in which to grow.
John Earle compiled a list of early plant names from old lists appearing in
documents and vocabularies between the tenth and the end of the fifteenth
centuries. The successive modifications of the name from "Streowberige,
Strea Berige, Streowberge, Streaw Berian Wisan, Streberi Lef,,, to "Strebere-
Wyse" and "Strawberry" show a long familiarity with it there. The last
name came from "A Pictorial Vocabulary of the Latter Part of the Fifteenth
Century." The Anglo-Saxon word streow meant hay. According to one
theory, the Anglo-Saxons in A.D. 900 called the strawberry the "hayberry"
because it ripened at the time the hay was mown. Another guess is that the
name derived from the way children strung the berries on straws of grass
or hay to sell, a custom still practiced in parts of Ireland today. A more likely
explanation is that the Anglo-Saxons used the name "strawberry" to describe
the way the runners strew or stray away from the mother plant to find
space in which to grow.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry
he strawberry is not, from a botanical point of view, a berry. Technically, it is an aggregate accessory fruit, meaning that the fleshy part is derived not from the plant's ovaries but from the receptacle that holds the ovaries. Each apparent "seed" (achene) on the outside of the fruit is actually one of the ovaries of the flower, with a seed inside it.
KY...........
just tasted good? 
