science · 03 July 1806 · 218 years ago
In 1806, Michael Keens, a market gardener of Isleworth near London, exhibited the first cultivated strawberry that combined size, flavor, and color at the Royal Horticultural Society. The 600 strawberry varieties found today stem from five or six original wild species, and are a member of the rose family. The wild, small, fragrant forest strawberry of Europe was available to the Romans in the Middle Ages. Europeans discovered wild strawberries in Virginia when their ships landed there in 1588, grown by local American Indians who had cultivated strawberries as early as 1643. When Virginia sent a better flavored, strawberry to England in 1642, and a large white strawberry from Chile was introduced in 1806, the big fruit we know today, emerged. Strawberries are unique, because they are the only fruit with seeds on the outside.
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