Which is the Strawberry?

I am adding a number of Virginia strawberries, Fragaria virginiana, to my gardens this year.  This is part of my plan to incorporate more edible plants, particularly natives, into the landscape.  While I may not get many berries from these little plants this year, I expect to get a harvest next year after the plants have settled in.  One important thing that I will need to learn is how to tell these fruit bearing plants from the insidious mock or Indian strawberry, Duchesnea indica, that is growing just about everywhere on the property.

Here is mock strawberry with its bright yellow flower
and trifoliate leaves.  These leaves are evergreen here in zone 6.

Indian strawberry is an exotic species from southern Asia imported to the US as an ornamental plant and has widely naturalized over the years.  The 'Indian' in the name refers to a region of Asia, not Native Americans.

Both plants have similar trifoliate leaves with bluntly serrated (toothed) edges.  They each form tight clumps of basal leaves, spreading by above ground runners.  Also, they each produce bright red fruits with seeds on the surface.  The most obvious difference is the flower color, Virginia strawberries have white, 5-petaled flowers, while those of mock strawberry are bright yellow.

This newly planted Virginia strawberry has not settled in enough to flower.
The leaves are persistent through the winter, but these will turn red,
adding to winter interest.

Another difference is in the fruit.  The seeds of Virginia strawberry are located in depressions on the surface of the red 'berry'.  Mock strawberry seeds are actually in projections above the fruit's surface.  Also the fruit from mock strawberry is dry and tasteless compared to the sweet, juicy fruit from the Virginia strawberry.


These differences make it easy to tell the two plants apart when they are in bloom or fruit, but what about the rest of the year.  I was looking for a definitive feature to rely on.  Many times botanical descriptions depend on doing a comparison, e.g. more or less hairy, or 'broader' leaf.  I was looking for a yes or no test that I can use quickly while pulling weeds.

Here are both surfaces of the leaves of mock strawberry.
The arrow at left points out the longger terminal tooth.

So while the leaves of mock strawberry are more coarsely serrate and its veins are more divided than those of Virginia strawberry, the more practical method for me is to look at the tip of the leaf.  On nearly every leaflet of mock strawberry the  terminal tooth is longer than the ones on either side.  For Virginia strawberry the terminal tooth is shorter the its neighbors.  Maybe after working with the Virginia strawberries for a season or two I will appreciate the finer differences.  For now the goal is to not pull up any of my new plants.

Here are both leaf surfaces of Virginia strawberry.  Again,
the arrow points to the terminal tooth on the leaf, which is
distinctly smaller than its nearest neighbors.

More Maryland Wildflowers - 2nd Week of April

Deciding which native plant to use in a developed suburban landscape was fairly straightforward for me.  I could choose the plants I wanted without regard for to how it would impact the surrounding plant communities.  [Re]-introduction of nearly any native species into a sea of Euonymus and Barberries and the like would be a step in the right direction.

Now that I am working in a rural landscape I am becoming more sensitive to how my new plantings will affect the existing plant and animal communities.  I am cautious about introducing species that don't belong, native or not.  One very helpful resource for me is Native Plants for Wildlife Habitat and Conservation Landscaping Chesapeake Bay Watershed from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  This publication lists many native species found in the Chesapeake watershed including their native ecoregion (Mountain, Piedmont or Coastal) and state where each is found.  

As a designer I also want to insert some visual effects with form and color.  This may require broadening the plant palette, drawing in materials from other areas and even a few well behaved non-native plants to achieve a particular aesthetic effect.  In general I will utilize a wider variety of plants in the immediate vicinity of a house or other man-made feature.  As I move out to the edges of a property I narrow the plant selection to the regionally native species.  I try to avoid introducing any species that don't naturally belong there.  

So before I get too far in planning and planting new native gardens I need to do some surveys of what is already present.  This (finally) brings me to the topic of what I found growing during the second week of April.  The tree canopy was still pretty open and the woodland floor was really greening up.




The first thing that really hit me was the masses of Virginia Bluebells that were coming into bloom.  These started coming up about a month ago.  Some had purple tinged foliage that has since turned green.



I was very pleased to see large masses of Mayapples coming up, especially I had just bought a half dozen to plant along the driveway.  These look somewhat alien when they first break ground.  They have a large white flower that stays just under the leaf.  

Mayapple leaves open up like umbrellas, 6-8 inches across.  

Once leafed out Spicebush can still be identified by the spicy scent of its bark.

The number of Spring Beauties has finally peaked,
now the blooms remain only in the shadier spots.
Note the garlic mustard off to the right.

Spicebush was another plant that I had just purchased to add to driveway area.  I was very happy to see a large mass of these growing near the creek.  The little flower clusters add an ethereal yellow haze to the scene.  These are not as garish as the Forsythia that are also in full bloom at this time.  






The Spring Beauties, Claytonia virginica, are continuing to come out - now the ground is sprinkled with the pale pink blooms.  The Dutchman's Breeches, Dicentra cucullaria, have also come into fuller bloom.  Some are white and others have a yellowish cast.  

Flowers started out a pale green
before opening up and turning white.

In with the Dutchman's Breeches is a plant with similar finely divided foliage, but this one had tubular yellow flowers.  It turns out that this is Yellow Fumewort, Corydalis flavula.  This native annual is 4-12 inches tall and has glaucous green foliage similar to other Corydalis.  I had never seen this before and was suspicious that it may some of the non-native Yellow Corydalis (C. lutea) that escaped from a garden.  The distinguishing feature from other yellow Corydalis (C. aurea and lutea) is that the upper lip of the flower is toothed.  This species is rare in New England, but not uncommon further south and west.

This winter annual was probably among the
early foliage seen back in January

The upper lip of the flower is toothed.  Also,
 seed pods are visible just below the flower on the left.

Should be getting some yellow flowers from these Trout Lilies in a couple of weeks.
If they are white, then these would be White Trout Lily, E. albidum.

Down in the leaf litter I noticed the spotted leaves of Trout Lily, Erythronium.  No blooms or buds were evident at this time, so I will need to get back down to these is a week or so to catch them in bloom.  As I was climbing back up away from the stream I noticed that the Toothwort were finally in bloom.  The dangling white flowers are not spectacular on their own, but they complement the other ephemerals. The Woodland Phlox, Phlox divaricata, are putting up flower buds, but I did not see any in bloom.  Back up on the lawn I am seeing Common Blue Violet, Viola papilionacea, complemented by the yellow flowers of Rough Cinquefoil, Potentilla norvegica.  Oops, these are actually the non-native Indian Strawberry, Duchesnea indica, see the comments below.

Each flower stalk of these toothworts has a pair
of deeply tri-lobed leaves, hence the epithet  'diphylla'.

Woodland Phlox has formed it flower buds.  Opps, this is actually Cardamine laciniata.

Common Blue Violet has hairless flower stalks,
otherwise this could be Woolly Blue Violet, V. sororia.

Unlike other weedy Cinquifoils, Rough Cinquifoil has
trilobed leaves and relatively large blunt-tipped flowers.  However, this is actually
Indian Strawberry, Duchesnea indica. with larger flowers than the Cinquifoil
and later a red berry.

Along with all of these natives there is a large population of garlic mustard that are beginning to bloom now.  Removing these will be a long and tedious process.  I have put a supply of black trash bags around the property to collect these.  In areas where the soil is moist it is possible to get most of the root out by gently pulling the plant by its crown.  Garlic mustard has a lot of stored energy in its root and may be able to set seed even though it has been pulled out of the ground.  A good practice is to bag them up and let them bake in the sun for a while before sending them to the landfill.  Garlic mustard should not be put into your compost. However, it is edible and you can make a decent pesto from it.