Virginia strawberry

Photo: Walter Siegmund (talk) — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 3 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Native to eastern and central North America, and one of the two wild species — alongside the South American beach strawberry — whose 18th-century hybridization in Europe produced the modern garden strawberry.

Hardiness

Zone 3–8

Habit

Groundcover

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Summer–autumn

Mature size

Low rosette 10–25 cm, spreading freely by runners

Light

Full sun (open meadow)

Soil pH

6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Across North America — Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories east to Newfoundland and Labrador, south through every Canadian province and most of the United States to California, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and northern Florida, and just into north-eastern and north-western Mexico. Naturalised in northern and eastern Europe.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

2–4 yrs

Growth speed

Medium; typically fills in as ground cover within 1–2 growing seasons via runners.

Spacing

38 cm (15 in) apart — about 6.9 per m² (6.4 per 10 sq ft)

Leaf shape

Trifoliate leaves of three obovate leaflets with coarse, toothed margins, 2.5–5 cm long, semi-evergreen and velvety-textured; green above, pale beneath.

Root system

A dense, fibrous root system concentrated near the soil surface, radiating outward and downward from the crown.

Fruit description

Red, ovoid fruit to about 1.3 cm across — much smaller than the cultivated strawberry, with a sweet-tart flavor.

Propagation

Mainly vegetative — separating rooted plantlets from runners in spring or early summer, or stolon internode cuttings; seed germination is naturally poor and improves with cold stratification.

Pollination

Gynodioecious — populations contain a mix of hermaphrodite plants and female-only plants with sterile, pollen-less stamens; pollinators preferentially visit hermaphrodite flowers, and female plants depend entirely on nearby hermaphrodites for pollen.

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.