The best varietals of most plants are often the ones made by human intervention- selective breeding and such.
Wild ones are often too sour, or too bitter, or don't produce much, or are impossible to experience because they don't travel well.
Wild ones are often too sour, or too bitter, or don't produce much, or are impossible to experience because they don't travel well.
Wild strawberries sound great but they are tiny, ripen very unevenly and don't even taste that exciting.
The breeding of grapes clearly continues, in a stall not far from me I can see grapes for sale that are literally the size of small plums. (edit: cultivated plums that is. Wild plums, you're welcome to them, small and sour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloe)
Whilst food tends to be much smaller, bitter or sour, tougher to chew, lower in sugar and would not sell in a supermarket.
When I lived in North Wales decades ago we had wild strawberries, they were about two or three times the volume of a chickpea in size (IIRC), and in two years I only ever found one that was ripe all the way around (they usually ripen on one side, or had a large patch of white unripeness even when the rest was red). I don't even remember that one tasting particularly stunning either.
[1] rain, rocks, sheep, rain, snow, rain, coal, slate, rain, sheep with rain, rocks and sheep with rain, rain.
I never liked strawberries much until I my ex-fiancée took me for an afternoon picking wild ones in the beech forest above a fjord in southern Norway (near Porsgrunn). Only the size of garden peas, but a taste explosion in the mouth: intense flavour and intoxicating sweetness. Absolutely wonderful.
The giant store-bought things are pale and uninteresting by comparison. I can't eat them. They are like the ghosts of fruit.
My friend's wild strawberries in his garden in South Moravia are nearly as good. Similarly tiny, similarly intense.