Strikingly Strawberry, Revisited!

freshly picked from ana's garden ~ 2011 ~

 If you have never tried an Alpine Strawberry, than I can say with full confidence that you are truly missing out on the taste sensation of your life! Their zesty bouquet sends shiver up and down your delicate taste buds and perfume your breath with the scent of sweet roses. This thought keeps me going, even through the darkest winter, till it is Alpine Strawberry picking time once again. Tis the season, now, so go and find yourself an Alpine Strawberry patch today! And enjoy!!!

ALPINE STRAWBERRY, Fragaria species -- Wild strawberry, F. vesca, is a member of the Rose family. By the 1300’s strawberries were beginning to be taken into gardens and cultivated, so that by 1580 Thomas Tusser could mention it with confidence as one of his Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie:

Wife unto thy garden and set me a plot

With Strawberry rootes of the best to be got.

Such growing abroad, among thornes in the wood

Well chosen and picked prove excellent good.

photo by ana traina

Some Legends and Lore of Strawberries:

In provincial France, strawberries were regarded as an aphrodisiac. Newlyweds were always served a cold strawberry soup.

The strawberry was a symbol for Venus, the Goddess of Love, because of its heart shapes and red color.

Have you every eaten a double strawberry? Legend says that if you break the strawberry in half and share it with a member of the opposite sex, you will soon fall in love with each other.

In parts of Bavaria, people still practice the annual rite each spring of tying small baskets of wild strawberries to the horns of their cattle as an offering to elves. They believe that the elves, who are passionately fond of strawberries, will help to produce healthy calves and abundance of milk in return.

Queen Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII had a strawberry shaped birthmark on her neck, which, some claimed, proved she was a witch.

To symbolize perfection and righteousness, medieval stone masons carved strawberry designs on altars and around the tops of pillars in churches and cathedrals.

The strawberry, a member of the rose family, is unique in that it is the only fruit with seeds on the outside rather than the inside. Many medicinal uses were claimed for the wild strawberry, its leaves and root.

Did you know that the American Indians were actually cultivating strawberries in 1643?  They crushed the strawberries into a mortar, mixing them with meal to make a strawberry bread.

According to the Doctrine of Signatures, strawberries were noted as a cure for the heart. Lotions and gargles were prescribed for the mouth, throat, eyes, and ‘to fasten loose teeth’. Richard Brook wrote: ‘To ladies, and those who wish for good and clean teeth, there is nothing better than cleaning them with strawberries. Linnaeus claimed that wild strawberries cured gout.

An excellent tea was made from wild strawberry leaves, or from an infusion of strawberry and woodruff. The leaves were used as a lotion for the complexion and as a bath additive for those who suffered with ‘grievous aches and pains of the hips’. 

A recipe for a face wash, from The Good Housewife’s Handmaid, 1585, combines strawberries and wild Tansy distilled in 3pts of new milk.

A cordial water of Sir Walter Raleigh

Take a gallon of strawberries, and put them in a pint of aqua vitae, let them stand four or five days, strain them gently out, and sweeten the water as you please, with fine sugar, or else with Perfume.