Wild strawberries are perennial herbs with trailing shoots, nodally rooting stems and usually scaly rootstocks. The leaves are basal, long-stalked, with stipules, usually (in our species) trifoliolate and coursely round- to sharp-toothed. The flowers are often rather showy, usually arranged several (1 or 2 to 25) in open and repeatedly 2-forked to reduced clusters, which are conspicuously bracted and are borne on short to well-developed naked flower stems. The calyx has a short, spreading to saucerlike elongated floral axis below and 5 sepal-like secondary bracts alternate with the 5 ovate to lanceolate, usually upward-curved calyx lobes. The petals are white or pinkish. There are mostly 20 to 25 stamens, which are sometimes partially or totally sterile, borne in 4 or 5 series at the outer edge of the elongated floral axis below the calyx, with the filaments being rather short, broadened at the base. The numerous pistils are borne on an elongate, more or less hemispheric, hairless or (more commonly) sparsely to copiously softly long-woolly-hairy receptacle that gradually enlarges and becomes fleshy and usually juicy and well-tasting with the ripening of the fruits. The ovaries are from superficial and not at all imbedded to partially sunken below the surface of the receptacle in small pitlike depressions. The styles are slender, 1.5-3 times as long as the ovaries on which they are sideways inserted. The achenes are rather small, more or less pear-shaped. The genus consists of about 30 species of temperate Eurasia and N. America, with a few in S. America. The name comes from fraga, the Latin name of strawberry.
Guide to Identify Presented Species of Genus Fragaria
MIDDLE END TOOTH OF LEAFLET SHORTER
F. virginiana – Wild Strawberry Low plant with creeping stems. Wooded, gravelly areas, plains-montane.
Flowers white, regular. Petals 5, white, round, 6-13 mm long.
Leaves divided into 3 toothed leaflets, middle end tooth smaller.
