Wild Strawberry

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top 1000Wild Food
Wild Food

By Roger Phillips

Published 1986

  • About

Fragaria vesca A perennial herb common throughout the British Isles, it occurs in woods and scrub on base-rich soils and on basic grassland, sometimes becoming locally dominant in woods and on calcareous soils. The wild strawberry flowers from April to July and the fruits are borne from late June until August.

The wild strawberry has a flavour and fragrance more delicate than that of the cultivated variety but today it is much more commonly used in France than in Britain. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon ‘streow berie’, literally a straying plant that bears berries, alluding to the runners which stray from the parent plant in all directions.