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a truly baffling question about strawberries
Ha! you're pretty funny. :-)
OK, the modern strawberries that we all know and love were developed from 2 new world species. BUT... There were other species of strawberry that always lived in Europe (and beyond). So, yes. Europeans WERE eating strawberries before they were introduced from the New World. Here's a quote from a web page that tells a little mo " The Wild Strawberry or Wood Strawberry Fragaria vesca is native to the temperate regions of Eurasia and North America. It has become distributed worldwide and is sometimes found naturalised in southern Africa. It is a diploid species (i.e. 2 sets of chromosomes).The finding of strawberry achenes in neolithic archaeological excavations, shows that wild strawberries have been eaten by people since the earliest of times. Fragaria vesca was being cultivated in Europeans gardens by the 1500's (Renaissance) and after about 1530, cultivated strawberries are clearly larger than wild ones, indicating selective breeding. Although Fragaria vesca is still grown in gardens for domestic use, it is not used in commercial strawberry production because of the development of the Modern Garden Strawberry Fragaria ananassa." Steve Cereus-validus wrote: You no fool me Steverino, You're making that up. You claim that Europeans were eating strawberries before they were introduced from the New World. Next you will be saying that Romans wore wrist watches with Roman numerals on them!! "Steve" wrote in message More mystery than you apparently think. If your story is correct, how do you explain that they were called strawberries before Columbus sailed to America and before anyone in Europe knew that native Americans existed? I'll admit that perhaps the exact spelling of strawberry wasn't set until a little later but the name was there. I know that some people believe they were once called stray berries perhaps because their runners let them stray away from the patch where they were planted. When people started mulching with straw, the name slowly evolved into strawberry. I wasn't there so I don't know. ;-) Steve |
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