Photo: Unknown — Public domain · source
Survives zone 3 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
The woodland strawberry bears small (~15 mm) but intensely aromatic fruit and is the most widely naturalized wild strawberry species worldwide; cultivated in European gardens since at least Roman times, long before the modern garden strawberry existed.
- Hardiness
- Zone 3–9
- Habit
- Groundcover
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- June–Oct (ever-bearing)
- Mature size
- Low rosette 10–25 cm, spreading by runners; perfect in containers and as edging
- Light
- PARTIAL — the shade-tolerant strawberry; fruits in part shade
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate woodland
- Native range
- Nearly all of Europe, east through Russia, Siberia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Mongolia, China and Iran; long naturalized in parts of North America.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- Same year
- Growth speed
- Seedlings are slow to establish initially, then the plant spreads quickly once runners begin forming.
- Spacing
- 28 cm (11 in) apart — about 13 per m² (12 per 10 sq ft)
- Leaf shape
- Trifoliate leaves of three light-green leaflets with toothed margins.
- Root system
- Grows from a central rootstock/short rhizome (a 'crown').
- Fruit description
- Small conical berries around 15 mm, bright red, aromatic, sweet and succulent — more intensely flavored than the garden strawberry despite the small size.
- Propagation
- By seed, sown in early spring (four or more weeks to germinate, with slow initial seedling growth), or more commonly by lifting and transplanting rooted runners in July–August so new divisions establish before fruiting the following year.
- Pollination
- Hermaphrodite, insect-pollinated flowers, so a single plant is self-fertile and needs no separate pollinator — unlike some other wild Fragaria that are gynodioecious or dioecious.
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
Fertilizing. Does best in fertile, moisture-retentive soil across a wide pH range, mildly acid to mildly alkaline, and benefits from a mulch of pine or spruce leaves reflecting its native woodland-edge habitat.
How it spreads. Spreads rapidly and indefinitely by runners that root at each node as they extend, gradually forming loose colonies rather than one dense, contiguous mat.
Growing tips. Native to shaded, damp woodland, so it tolerates semi-shade well — fruiting is simply reduced rather than stopped — and also self-seeds into disturbed ground in addition to spreading by runners.
Grow journal
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