Wild strawberries (flowers, growing, trees, vines)

[mitopcat]

I was removing weeds from an area in my yard and found a few, medium sized strawberry plants. I wanted to know if I should place them in my garden, near my other strawberries.

I'm not sure if they're "fake strawberries" or not. Would it hurt any of my other strawberries or effect anything.

[kinkytoes]

If the leaves look just like strawberry leaves, see if the plants have runners. If so, the plants may be an invasive weed from India called Duchesnea Indica or more recently Fragaria Indica. It produces what I used to call "wild strawberries" as a kid, a flavorless (and supposedly inedible) strawberry-like fruit.

FI is invasive and can be difficult to rid of. There are native strawberry relatives, one of which is "barren strawberry," I had mistaken my invasive Fragaria for one of those. But I wasn't that lucky! Barren strawberry (Waldsteinia Fragarioides) has somewhat larger flowers and no fruit.

Don't despair if you do have the invasive plant, though. It's near impossible to get rid of...but if you can admit defeat to some extent, it does have pretty yellow flowers, and the red fruit is somewhat ornamental...and to my knowledge not poisonous.

[mitopcat]

Here's the thing, this is actually the first year anything has grown there. We trimmed down the apple tree and cut down a few "junk trees" (as my dad calls them), and the area exploded. Before it was a small circle of ground with no life what so ever. No food plants of any kind in our yard, up until this year.

The only way I figured out they were strawberries was because of the leaf. They're are very similar in shape, color, size, and height. The only difference is they're a little slimmer leaf. They already have a few flowers starting to grow. So, I'll just wait this time around and see what happens.

[Mac_Muz]

No don't they will be bitter/sour if they ever produce and the berries will be very small. They will invade what you have as well, and then you won't know which is which. In the end the plants you have will mix (mate) and go back to wild.

[mitopcat]

Originally Posted by Mac_Muz

No don't they will be bitter/sour if they ever produce and the berries will be very small. They will invade what you have as well, and then you won't know which is which. In the end the plants you have will mix (mate) and go back to wild.

You're absolutely right. I actually got to visit a store today that had the same plants for sale. Only the flower were pink-ish/purple. They're called 'Strawberry Lipstick'.

They are just a form of ground cover, but they multiply. The parent plant sends out runners, just like other strawberry plants, but this is an attempt to grow other plants. They also make fruit, too, but very small.

I won't move them to my garden. The idea of having more vines growing around it is bad enough.

[Mac_Muz]

The field is loaded with wild strawberries here, and they taste bad.

Currently I have no ready to eat strawberries, but winter was long, Spring was cold and dank, and I waited to uncover mine. When I did I found the mice had ravaged the plants killing hundreds.

I found skeletons of mice, mostly skulls which is proof enough to me, besides the red fox I saw pouncing thru the snow trying to get mice back in winter.

I can't see anything else wrong, but I am not seeing many flowers yet.

No bugs, the plants left a couple three hundred maybe, all look real nice, and runners are coming out too.

I am hoping the flowers will appear shortly. I live in the southern part of the Northern half of NH, and everything else in the garden is behind as well, in part due to late planting.

I am sure in your case I am right. My wife and I do a good bit of workjing with plants.

Our veggie garden harvest is intended to be eatten from harvest to harvest, and that area is apx 60 x 100 feet.

Recently I mossed in the area called lenai here, there is pictures of that in another thread in this garden room. I had no idea what to expect, so asked and was given a few links. I just followed that advice with moss growing here in the pine barrens. That idea seems to be working out real well.

The moss appears to be surviving if not thriving.

I do woods work as a hobby too, making the pine barrens be not a pine barren, and assist any sugar maples first, oaks, beech, and birch in that order. I'ld like to think that after I am gone someone will still make maple sugar syrups and candies too. The trees I work with won't be ready for another 40 years and I don't have that long.

On Edit: this is the link to that thread, there is pics of about all of these topics on that thread in the 3 pages.
//www.city-data.com/forum/garde...moss-info.html