Wild strawberry
Fragaria vesca
Family · Rosaceae · Harmless
The fingernail-sized strawberry that grows on the edges of damp northern woods, tasting more of strawberry than any supermarket one. Finding a patch is one of the best things a June trail gives.
Oak woods · Uplands · Streams and ditches · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known aswoodland strawberry, alpine strawberry
How to tell it
Three toothed, bright green leaflets with marked veins, on a hairy stalk. White five-petalled flowers with a yellow centre. It spreads by runners, those threads that run along the ground and root. A small red fruit that comes away easily.
What it is confused with
Creeping cinquefoil
Potentilla reptans
Same family, both creeping by runners. Count the leaflets: five on cinquefoil, three on wild strawberry. And cinquefoil has a yellow flower and never bears red fruit.
What it is for
The fruit is eaten raw, and is the only reason anyone kneels down on a trail. The leaves were a traditional infusion. Pick little and leave the rest: a patch takes years to form.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
No approved contributions for this entry yet.
Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.