Strawberries are my favorite fruit because of three factors:
We always have had a patch, and in the longest days of the summer, when the strawberries are in full fruition, we, as a family, unhappily set on our haunches and pick the quack grass away from our 'berries.
May Dad certainly has a bit of a strawberry... love. One time, when my brother and I started picking under-develped (hard) strawberries and whipping them at each other, my father came out and declared that we didn't have enough to do, and tried to invent a job for us. When he failed, he told us strait out that he was going to "swat" us if we didn't stop "wasting his berries, damnit."
As a plant with character, the strawberry at first glance seems to be a bit lacking. It doesn't have sharp pointy things, the plant is low slung, close to the ground. It can be shaded out easily and its crop can be decimated by a few song birds, two children, or even the lowly slug.
But the beloved berries character from other places: it grows in the north and, for a plant with apparently very little "woody" stalk, can come back, year after year (probably due to some secret root weapon). It only really grows to be about 8 inches tall, yet produces pounds and pounds of the most delectable, sweet and, well, character filled fruit around.
Garden Strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa and related cultivars) is the most common variety of strawberry cultivated worldwide. Like all strawberries, it is in the family Rosaceae; its fruit is more technically known as an accessory fruit, in that the fleshy part is derived not from the plant's ovaries (achenes) but from the peg at the bottom of the bowl-shaped hypanthium that holds the ovaries.
The Garden Strawberry originated in France in the early 18th century, and represents the accidental cross of Fragaria virginiana from Virginia, which was noted for its fine flavor, and Fragaria chiloensis from Chiloé, off the coast of Chile and noted for its large size.
