Homeowner Forum / Lawn and Garden / June 2007

Try posting this in another newsgroup:
rec.food.cooking

Might increase your chances of getting answers. There are people in that
newsgroup who'd crawl through miles of broken glass for a bowl of melted ice
cream.

You mean what the French call Fraise du Bois? They are small but
intensely flavored strawberries.

I know that Edible Landscaping sells a strawberry they call Fragaria
virginiana.  I got one from them and it seems to be doing well
(sending out tons of runners, which is OK with me because I want more
strawberry plants).  I don't really know the exact parentage (was it
collected from the wild? if so when and where? has it been propagated
vegetatively or via seed? etc).  Looks like they ship to Canada but
with some extra bureaucracy over a US shipment.  F. virginiana is one
of the ancestors of the typical cultivated strawberry.

Wild strawberry could also mean F. vesca.  This has fruit which are
flavorful but much smaller than F. virginiana or cultivated
strawberries.  I've also seen those in the garden trade, at least (
http://www.yerbabuenanursery.com/online_album/0274.htm - this is a
California subspecies which my other sources call Fragaria vesca
ssp. californica).

For native plants in general, opinions vary about whether you are
better off with the nursery plants or collecting in the wild (the
latter risks depleting a vulnerable population, or one which is liable
to overcollection.  When carefully done, with the landowner's
permission, this can be a preferred strategy however).

Hmm.  Most of what I know has been listed above.  It might take some
research to try to find out what would have been growing in Ukraine.
I wouldn't even know whether what you collected was native to Ukraine,
or whether it was an escapee from cultivation (such as the Duchesnea
indica, Indian Strawberry, which we have here in North America, but
that one has yellow flowers and inedible fruit).

Is there  4H club near you? Those kids know all the best spots or Gril
Scouts?