s, therefore, not, properly speaking, a fruit; it is a
fleshy receptacle, bearing the fruit on it, which fruit is, in fact,
the ripe carpels. Now this structure is, as I have said, common to all
strawberries, each variety having, however, its own peculiarities of
growth and appearance.

There are but nine distinct species of the tribe Fragaria: one native
in Germany, where it is called Erdbeere; two in North, and one in
South America; one in Surinam; and one in India; the remaining three
being indigenous in Britain, where, besides these three wild species,
there are at least sixty mongrel varieties, the results of
cultivation; some of which, recently produced from seed, are of great
excellence. The finest of these native British species is the
wood-strawberry (_Fragaria vesca_), which is common everywhere; the
second, the hautboy (_F. elatior_), is much less frequently found, and
is by Hooker supposed to be scarcely indigenous; and the third, the
one-leaved strawberry (_F. monophylla_), is unknown to me, and only
named by some writers as a species. The common wood-strawberry bears
leaves smaller, more sharply notched, and more wrinkled in appearance,
than any of the cultivated species. The earliest formed are closely
covered, as is the stem, with white silvery hairs, and the leaves turn
red early in the autumn, or in dry weather. The blossoms appear very
early in the spring, throwing up their delicate white petals on every
bank and hedgerow, among the clusters of violets and primroses, and
even not unfrequently before these sweet harbingers of spring venture
to unfold and give promise of abundant fruit. But though the blossoms
are so common, from some reason or other the fruit seldom ripens
freely, unless along some of the more remote and secluded woodpaths,
where the bright red berries lurk on every sunny bank, between the
trunks of the old beech and oak trees, and are overhung by the
beautiful bunches of polypody and foxglove, and other free-growing
wild-plants which spring in such solitudes, providing the flocks of
varied song-birds which frequent such delightful glades with many a
juicy meal.

Few things can be more agreeable than a day of strawberry-picking in
the woods and glens where they abound, when troops of happy little
children are scattered about, singly, or in groups of three or four,
each with a basket to receive the delicious spoil, and all grubbing
among the moss and herbage, and shouting with exultat