. Success with small fruits . agaria Vcsca, or the Alpine strawberry. It isone of the most widely spread fruitsof the world, for it grows, and forcenturies has grown, wild through-out Northern and Central Europeand Asia, following the mountainsfar to the south ; and on this conti-nent, from time immemorial, theIndian children have gathered itfrom the Northern Atlantic to thePacific. In England this speciesexhibits some variation from the Alpine type, and was called by our ancestors the Wood strawberry. Thechief difference between the two is in the form of the fruit, the Woodvarieties being rou
. Success with small fruits . agaria Vcsca, or the Alpine strawberry. It isone of the most widely spread fruitsof the world, for it grows, and forcenturies has grown, wild through-out Northern and Central Europeand Asia, following the mountainsfar to the south ; and on this conti-nent, from time immemorial, theIndian children have gathered itfrom the Northern Atlantic to thePacific. In England this speciesexhibits some variation from the Alpine type, and was called by our ancestors the Wood strawberry. Thechief difference between the two is in the form of the fruit, the Woodvarieties being round and the Alpine conical. They are also subdividedinto white and red, annual and monthly varieties, and those that produceno runners, which are known to-day as Bush Alpines. The Alpine, as we find it growing wild, was the strawberry of theancients. It is to it that the suggestive lines of Virgil refer, Ye boys that gather flowers and strawberries,Lo, hid within the grass an adder lies. The Alpine Strawberry (Fragaria Vesca).. ierrks,%2!Ers Jf SlTiW = JUNGLJKG There is no proof, I believe, that the strawberry was cultivated duringany of the earlier civilizations. Some who wrote most explicitly con- 36 Success with Small Fruits. cerning the fruit culture of their time do not mention it; and Virgil, Ovid,and Pliny name it but casually, and with no reference to its cultivation. Itmay appear a little strange that the luxurious Romans, who fed on night-ingales tongues, peacocks brains, and scoured earth and air for delicacies,should have given but little attention to this fruit. Possibly they earlylearned the fact that this species is essentially a wildling, and, like the trail-ing arbutus, thrives best in its natural haunts. The best that grew couldbe gathered from mountain-slopes and in the crevices of rocks. Moreover,those old revelers became too wicked and sensual to relish Alpine straw-berries. Its congener, the Wood strawberry, was the burden of one of theLondon street
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