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.

2010 Boston Flower and Garden Show

After a one year lay-off the flower show has returned to Boston. I attended only one day of this 5 day event (March 24-28) and I was generally pleased with what I saw. For me the new venue, the Seaport World Trade Center was an improvement over the previous site. Most notably for me was the improved lighting which allows the display gardens look more ‘natural’.

Another change for this year was that the vendors and the garden displays were in the same area. This provided a nice, balanced mix of things to see. The competitive horticulture displays were located in a separate area which allowed for more intimate viewing.

Judging by the crowds there on a weekday, the show was successful. I heard from a friend that Saturday’s crowd was huge. So it sounds like the show was a success from an attendance point of view.

While the overall lighting was better than in the former location, I found that the use of tinted lighting over some of the garden displays was a disaster. For example, some display used blue-green tints on the arborvitae and reddish lighting on the rhododendrons. I could not tell what the plants actually looked like when the colors are rigged to ‘enhance’ them.

I was only there one day (Friday) and I found the lectures and demonstrations to be quite good. A few take away gems are:
Edible Landscaping with Paul Split, who talked about incorporating many conventional herbs in the landscape in unconventional ways. He also touched on companion planting and using plants to control pests. Some of his great ideas included using a ring of hostas (dense root mass) to control the spread of mints in a bed; use leeks to slow the spread of underground insects and pennyroyal to block insects crawling on the surface of the ground.

Listening to the landscape: Using Nature’s Cues to Design a Garden that Works by Scott LeFleur of the New England Wildflower Society. The key point I took away was that if you select plants that are right for the conditions on your site (light, water, soil conditions, etc.) then you do not need to add any additional materials, like fertilizers and soil amendments or extra water, to have a successful planting. Another comment was that it is best not to put debris from invasive plants into your compost pile, in this case, landfilling or burning is the better option.

The most energetic presentation of the day came from Kathleen Gagan of Peony’s Envy with her Passion for Peonies. This talk was full of excellent information on peonies, both herbaceous and tree types, and I took two pages of notes. There is a ton of information on the company website and I won’t recount much of it here. The only point I will share here is that some tree peonies are grafted onto the roots of herbaceous plants and that it is critical that these be planted deeply with the graft union about 6” underground. This will keep the rootstock from putting up new growth. Non-grafted tree types should be planted about 2” below ground level.

Most unique vendor I saw was Designer Palms Inc.  They make and sell steel palm trees many with lighted coconuts. At first I was aghast, but then, when I considered them as garden or poolside sculptures, they began to grow on me. In the right setting these could be a really unique accent or focal point in a garden where you want a tropical feel.

Next week it’s back to Native Plants!