Photo: Repina Tatyana — CC BY 4.0 · source
Survives zone 3 through 7
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
A cold-hardy wild strawberry native to Siberia, the Russian Far East, Mongolia, Korea and northern China, valued by breeders for frost tolerance and aromatic fruit; unlike the strongly dioecious musk strawberry, its flowers are typically bisexual and self-fertile.
- Hardiness
- Zone 3–7
- Habit
- Groundcover
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Rosette 10–25 cm, spreading by runners
- Light
- Full sun to partial
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, Mongolia, Korea, and northern/northeastern China.
- Status
- Wild
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Vigorous, spreading quickly by runners once established.
- Spacing
- 30 cm (12 in) apart — about 11 per m² (10 per 10 sq ft)
- Leaf shape
- Variable leaflets 1–5 cm, obovate to rhombic-ovate with a slightly pointed tip, hairy beneath especially along the veins.
- Root system
- Shallow and fibrous from a short woody crown, almost all of it in the top 15–30 cm, with new roots striking down wherever a runner touches soil. Nothing to dig around: the crown must sit at soil level, buried too deep it rots and planted too high it dries out.
- Fruit description
- Small fruit (about 5 mm or more across) ripening purple-red, hemispheric to obovoid, sweet and succulent, with achenes deeply sunken into the receptacle.
- Propagation
- By seed, sown in spring (four or more weeks to germinate), or by dividing rooted runners in July–August; spreads readily by runners.
- Pollination
- Predominantly hermaphroditic — bisexual, self-fertile, insect-pollinated flowers, with unisexual flowers occurring only occasionally within populations, a notably more hermaphrodite-dominant sexual system than the strongly dioecious musk strawberry.
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
How it spreads. Vigorous, spreading quickly by runners to form colonies in forest and meadow understory.
Growing tips. Grows naturally in the shade of forest trees at 600–4,000 m elevation, so tolerates woodland shade better than many Fragaria; noted in Chinese breeding literature as a resource for cold tolerance and aromatic fruit.
Grow journal
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