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Comment by user070223 | Hacker News Reader

Probably because strawberries are not grown from seeds (The visible seeds, is actually, "botanicly", the fruit; the strawberry is the Accessory fruit)

Never knew the strawberry was also part of the colombian exchange, I find it funny that the modified strawberry found it way back to chile, which remind me of the legend about the Calafate, another chilean berry, "whom who eats the calafate always comes back".

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calafate_(mito)

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The European wild strawberries are very small, but their fragrance is much more intense than of the cultivated strawberries.

Before the import of the American strawberries from which the cultivated strawberries have been obtained, there were no big strawberries in Europe.

A similar relationship exists between the European wild blueberries and the cultivated blueberries brought from America. The European native blueberries are smaller, but more fragrant.

I think the wild blueberries are actually bilberries, at least that was the case in Russia. Closely related and in the same genus, but they’re distinct species. Like the wild strawberries no one has figured out how to cultivate them so there are few commercial sources and supply is constrained.

Some of my favorite memories of preschool was gathering bilberries in the forest behind the school. It was essentially like Halloween with kids coming back sick from eating too much sugar.

The wild/forest strawberries (Fragaria vesca) are very easy to grow. If I can do it, anyone can! The seeds are quite inexpensive and the plants yield generous amounts of berries the first season. There is also a white/yellow variety that is quite yummy.

Are you sure they’re not alpine strawberry varieties? Those look almost exactly alike and are successfully cultivated, but their flavor is closer to garden strawberries than woodland wild strawberries, which are spread via runners not seeds.

I am not an expert at greenery so I am not 100% sure, unfortunately. The ones I have sown are of different varieties; some have runners and some do not. I cannot recall that either variant was harder than the other to grow, and once established they are like weeds…

You are right about the European bilberries being a distinct species.

I have used both "strawberry" and "blueberry" as generic names.

The European strawberry is also a distinct species, but belonging to the same genus with the American strawberries (Fragaria). The same for the European bilberry and the American blueberry that is the ancestor of the cultivated blueberries. They are different species of the same genus (Vaccinium).

>The European wild strawberries are very small, but their fragrance is much more intense than of the cultivated strawberries.

it was always such a treat to stumble upon a patch of those

Do you mean strawberry plants are typically propagated via runners/stolons? I’d prefer to do that, but I doubt I could get a viable plant in the mail. But a sterilized seed in growing medium with a cytokinin will cause a strawberry “seed” to produce dozens of plants over a few months or so. They’re definitely able to grow, if less efficiently than propagating other ways.

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