Plant · P-459

Woodland Strawberry

Fragaria vesca

Woodland strawberry is a low, shade-tolerant perennial groundcover native across the northern hemisphere including most of the United States and Canada, and the wild parent behind alpine strawberry cultivars. Its berries are small but intensely aromatic and sweet, eaten fresh or dried, and the leaves brew into an excellent tea. It is the strawberry to plant under a closing canopy - it fruits best with some sun but keeps growing in part shade or shade where its garden-strawberry relatives would fail. It spreads only by surface runners that root at each node into a loose mat, and the extra plantlets lift straight off as free propagation stock.