G.M. Darrow, The Strawberry: History, Breeding and Physiology
THE JOURNEY OF the Chilean strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis, from Chile to France in 1714 was the most important event in the history of the modern strawberry. The Chilean berry had one quality the European kinds lacked -- size. The large berries attracted the notice of a French spy who had crossed the pirate-menaced seas to Chile in the early 1700's on a mission for King Louis XIV. Along with his observations on fortresses, armies, guns and supply routes, governors and Indians, he included a description and drawing of the Chilean strawberry. A collector as well as an observer, he spent six months caring for the specimens he took with him on the return voyage to France. Through the initiative of this young man, the New World strawberry, already cultivated for many years by the Chilean Indians, was brought as a bride to France where her marriage to North American F. virginiana took place.
ln the early 1700's wild F. chiloensis grew over much the same area of Chile as it does today. The roots bind the sand along the coast of middle and southern Chile and then the plant advances inland, where it climbs as high as 5,100 feet in the Cordillera and wanders as far eastward as the Argentine provinces of Neuquen, Chubut and Rio Negro. At the time of the Spanish conquest of Chile in the mid-1500's, the only Indians who lived in the country of wild F. chiloensis were the Mapuche in the north and the Huilliche further south. These two tribes were very probably the first to cultivate F. chiloensis, since both distinguished in their languages between the wildgrowing strawberry (llahuen, lahuene, or lahueni) and the cultivated one (quellghen), later called the frutillar by the Spaniards. At the time of the conquest another Indian group, the Araucanians, also grew strawberries along with maize, potatoes, pumpkins and beans, but they did not live in the area where F. chiloensis grew wild. For how many hundreds of years had the Mapuche and the Huilliche Indians cultivated F. chiloensis? Did this Indian culture of strawberries predate the European one, which seems to have commenced in the 1400's? No one knows, but when F. chiloensis was brought to France in 1714 it certainly had as long a history of cultivation as the European strawberry.
Until 1550-1551 the Mapuche and Huilliche Indians cultivated their strawberries undisturbed. Then the Spanish conquistador, Pizzaro, who had been attempting to conquer Chile for fifteen years, appointed Pedro de Valdivia supreme commander of the Spanish troops in Cuzco, Peru. Under Pizzaro they were able to penetrate the region between Rio Itata and Rio Tolten where the Mapuche put up a stiff fight. The Spaniards won, and as keen appraisers of South American culture, they counted the strawberry among the spoils of conquest. Soon after, the Chilean strawberry arrived in Cuzco, then the home of Garcilazo de la Vega, the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador. In his study of Inca culture, Los Commentarios Reales de los Incas, he described the fruits cultivated by the Incas of his day. Although de la Vega left Peru in 1559, he included in his descriptions a fruit called the Chili, which he thought probably had come to Cuzco in 1557, six years after Valdivia's conquest. According to him, this pleasant-tasting fruit bore small seeds on its surface like the fruits of the Arbutus. Both fruits were of the same size, but that of the Chili was rather long and heart-shaped instead of round, and the plant grew on low bushes which crept along the ground. Botanists are certain that de la Vega was describing the strawberry. As he was unable to give the fruit a Peruvian name, he called it instead the "Chili," thus supporting the evidence that the species was F. chiloensis, the strawberry of the Mapuche and Huilliche Indians.
In 1606 while in Spain, the sixty-eight-year-old de la Vega wrote his recollections of the Chilean strawberry as he first saw it in 1557 in Cuzco: "Another fruit which is called chili arrived at Cuzco in the year 1557. It is of excellent taste and very good to eat. It is borne on low plants, almost crawling on the ground; it has a berry like the arbutus, and is the same size but not round, longer, and shaped like a heart."1
One of the first descriptions of the Chilean berries known to reach Europe was in the Historia Relation del Reyno de Chile, published in 1646 by the missionary Alonso de Ovalle, who wrote it during a trip to Rome. De Ovalle had lived in Chile until 1641. "Garden fruits are never, or only very rarely sold," he commented, "and anybody can go into a garden and eat as much as he likes without any restriction. Only strawberries, which are called Frutilla, are sold. Although I saw them growing wild for miles, they are very expensive when cultivated. Their taste and smell differ from those I saw in Rome. In size they are as large as pears and are mostly red, but in the territory of Concepción there are also white and yellow ones."
Another voyager, a Catholic priest named Louis Feuillee, provided a description of the Concepción strawberry. "Physical and Mathematical Observations with Several Remarks on Natural History Made at Concepción, January 1709," is the heading for Chapter 25 of his Journal in which the passage occurs. After noting the reversed order of the seasons south of the Equator, as compared with their sequence in the Northern Hemisphere, Pere Feuillee continued: "Several fruits, like pears, apples, strawberries, etc. were ripe. For dessert we were served some strawberries of a marvellous taste, whose size equalled that of our largest nuts. Their color is a pale white. They are prepared in the same manner as we fix them in Europe, and, although they have neither the color nor the taste of ours, they do not lack excellence."2 Feuillee had been sent out as King Louis XIV's official mathematician to explore and map the West Indies and South America. For two years he traveled the Chilean and Peruvian coasts, mapping cities, sketching panoramic views and collecting plants. But Pere Feuillee failed to include the "excellent" strawberry of Chile in the collection he brought back to Brest. Fortunately, the curiosity of Louis XIV about the New World and his concern over Spanish defenses on the Pacific coast of South America remained strong. Four months after Feuillee's return, the King dispatched another explorer on a remarkably similar mission, this time with orders to report on the Spanish fortifications. Unlike the priest who preceded him, who was a trained botanist, Amédée François Frézier was an engineer, but he had the botanist's impulse for collecting. He was the only explorer known to bring specimens of F. chiloensis back to Europe, giving the Old World the large-fruited strawberries of the New.
Lieutenant Colonel Frézier was a thirty-year-old member of the French Army Intelligence Corps when in 1711 he was commissioned to sail to the Spanish colonies of Chile and Peru on a reconnaissance mission. King Louis XIV of France had paid vast sums to maintain his grandson on the Spanish throne and was determined to get full information of even the least known parts of the Spanish West Indies before the French, as well as other nations, could be excluded from those seas by the Spaniards.3
For this end, he pitched upon our Author, an experienced Engineer and Mathematician in his Service, whom he knew to be in every way qualified to make Hydrographical Observations for the Use of Mariners, and for the Correction of the Charts, and also to take exact Plans of the most considerable Ports and fortresses along the Coasts whither he was going; to direct to their best Anchorages, and to point out their respective Dangers; (Things which might hereafter be of great Use to the French, if a War should happen to break out again between the two Nations.) And this Gentleman he sent at his own Charge on board a Merchant-Ship, in the Year 1712, to pass as a Trader only, the better to insinuate himself with the Spanish Governors, and to have all opportunities of learning their Strength, and whatever else he went to be inform'd of.
Thus read the 1717 English introduction to the book which Frézier had published the year before, entitled Relation of the Voyage to the South Sea, Along the Coast of Chile and Perou, Made During the Years 1712, 1713, and 1714. Other sources describe his assignment as the study of the defenses in Chile and Peru alone. Whatever its scope, this was a delicate mission for the young but well-qualified engineer.
Frézier never referred to the fact in his writings, but his family name was an ancient one, which derived from the French word for the strawberry -- fraise. Perhaps he did not know the story of his ancestor, Julius de Berry, a citizen of Auvers who was knighted by the Emperor and King of France, Charles Simplex, in 916 for a gift of ripe strawberries. As the story goes, the Emperor Charles was returning home from Lyons where he and Cardinal Clemens de Monte Alto, Italy, had gone to settle a local dispute. The Emperor stopped at Auvers to prepare a sumptuous feast for the Cardinal. At the end of the entertainment Julius de Berry presented the Emperor with dishes of ripe strawberries. The Cardinal was greatly impressed, and, after seeing and tasting the berries, he declared that such fruit would certainly be a rarity in Italy. He marveled that such berries could be ripe in the early part of May. The Emperor was so pleased with Julius's timely offering that he knighted him and changed his surname from Berry to Fraise, a name which later became Frazer. The Emperor also gave the family three fraises or stalked strawberries for their coat of arms (Plate 4-1).4
Several of the Frazers emigrated to Scotland in the mid-1000's as members of the company sent by King Henry I of France with his ambassador, Count Chatere, to honor the reign of King Malcolm III who had vanquished Macbeth. The Frazers fought well in King Malcolm's battle against the invading Danes and he honored them with grants of land. He gave the family a shield and coat of arms of azure with a triangular field topped by a crown. Within this triangle was their original crest of three fraises. Later, in the sixteenth century, one of the Frazers returned to France to escape political troubles in Scotland. He settled in the southeastern Savoy region, on the Swiss-Italian border and from this ancestor there descended Amedee Francois Frézier, who by name was certainly the appropriate man to introduce from Chile the mother of the modern strawberry, F. chiloensis.
The father of Amedee Francois was a distinguished attorney of law at Chambery and he had wanted his son to follow him in the law. The son, however, showed an insurmountable aversion to law. The boy's precocious intelligence, exceptional aptitude for the sciences and his facility for foreign languages persuaded his father to send him to Paris to study at the center of the French academic world. For three years Frézier studied science with a strong complementary dose of theology. Under two famous teachers he wrote his first essay on a subject in which he became expert as an explorer some years later. It was entitled: "Treatise on Navigation and the Elements of Astronomy." His scientific studies completed, Frézier set off on a trip to Italy where he developed a taste for art. He took special notice of architecture and what he learned he later applied in his engineering of fortresses and defense structures.
Around 1700 Frézier returned to France and accepted a lieutenantship in an infantry regiment. Meanwhile, he exploited the leisure of garrison life to publish a Treatise on Fireworks in 1706. Until then pyrotechnics had mainly military uses. Frézier was interested in the spectacular fireworks displays for ceremonies. In his book he provided a review of earlier studies and their instructions for the manufacture of decorative fireworks. The book became a text for fireworks makers. The attention it received won for Frézier a transfer to the military intelligence corps, as military engineer for Saint-Malo. At last he was able to work exclusively with science. Garangeau, Frézier's superior officer, praised his zeal and skill in several reports and it was on Garangeau's recommendation that Mr. Pelletier de Souzy, the minister of fortifications, suggested Frézier as the man to study the defense fortifications of Chile and Peru -- the mission from which Frézier would return to France with the Chilean strawberry.
After several false starts and delays caused by storms, calms and the loss of an anchor, Frézier sailed on January 7, 1712, aboard the St. Joseph, an armed merchant ship. The company finally reached the open sea without the feared attacks from pirates. Pirating was a sport the French enjoyed themselves when conditions were favorable, for Frézier recorded: "During that time, we discovered a small ship, which we judged to be Portuguese from the island of Madera, but the sea ran too high and we had too much business of our own to go about taking prizes."5 After a long 160-day voyage round Cape Horn, Frézier arrived in Concepción, Chile, on June 16, 1712.
This was his base for more than a year and a half. He posed as a merchant captain so that he could visit the fortifications as a tourist. All the while he was studying them for Louis XIV, sketching maps which showed the best approaches for attack, where ammunition was stored and the routes of escape. He made friends with the Spanish officials who, had they known the true nature of his assignment, would have had his head. In his report Frézier was able to estimate the strength of the Spanish administration in each area he visited and he reviewed the organization of the government, its power over the Indians, and the unity and support that could be expected among the colonial governors. He noted that the Spaniards were just beginning to develop their gold and silver mines and he predicted these would become a source of great wealth to them. This part of his report was to be of such interest to the other European nations, that Frézier's book was translated immediately after its appearance in French, and within three years was available in English and other major European languages. In his excursions to the ports and capitals of Chile and Peru, the traveler also reported on the operations of the Church, the social organization and customs of the Indians, the physical geography of the area and its agricultural products. He remarked upon everything from earthquakes to the diversity of the seasons in the plains and in the Cordillera to the zoology of Peru. His book also contained several descriptions of new plants he had noticed. Among these was an exceptionally large-fruited strawberry plant which he found at Concepción.
The Indians called the site Penco, "pen" signifying "to find," and "co" meaning "water." Pedro de Valdivia, conqueror of Chile, changed the name to Concepción after he had subdued the neighboring Indians and founded a city there. Concepción is on the coast where a road by the same name leads to the beach. The strawberries of which Frézier wrote were cultivated in the rich soil around Concepción (Fig. 4-1), soil which the officer described as "extraordinarily fertile, and so easy to till that they [the inhabitants] only scratch it with a plow."6 The Spaniards called the strawberry plant the "Frutillar" and its berries the "Frutilla," meaning "little fruit."
There they plant whole Fields, with a Sort of Strawberry Rushes, differing from ours, in that the Leaves are rounder, thicker and more downy. The fruit is generally as big as a Walnut, and sometimes as a Hen's Egg, of a whitish Red, and somewhat less delicious of taste than our Wood Strawberries. I have given some Plants of them to Monsieur de Jussieu, for the King's Garden, where Care will be taken to bring them to bear. Besides these, there is plenty in the Woods of our European Kind. And in Short, all manner of Garden-Product among us, grow there plentifully, and almost without trouble.
It was this description, quoted here from the 1717 English translation of Frézier's book, which was to fascinate European botanists and gardeners. Any plant that could produce strawberries as big as a walnut had great value and so, as samples of F. chiloensis passed back and forth, each recipient would take care to note his experience with the plant.
Frézier accompanied his description with a somewhat stylized drawing (Fig. 4-2) of the "Fraise du Chile dessinee au grandeur naturelle," the Chilean strawberry drawn in its natural size, showing fruits, but no flowers, and which he described in Latin as "Fragaria Chiliensis, fructu maximo, foliis carnosis hirsutis, vulgo frutilla," Chile strawberry with big fruit and leathery hirsute leaves commonly known as Frutilla. Fifty years later Frézier discussed the cultivation of F. chiloensis at Concepción in a letter he sent on November 18, 1765, to Antoine N. Duchesne who was writing a book on strawberries; 7
They are found in the little valley plains where one can conduct a small stream to water them, as is done for the fields in several places in France, because it only rains in Chile during two months of the year, during three at most, in the wintertime, which corresponds to our summer, due to the situation of the southern temporal zone.... The berries are brought back in such abundance to the city of Concepción and the vicinity that people sell them at the market like other fruits. For half a real, which is the lowest money, one gets one or two dozens, wrapped in a cabbage leaf.
Frézier left Concepción on February 19, 1714, and after stopping off at Brazil and the Azores he reached Marseilles on the 17th of August. With him he carried several of the strawberry plants to which he played nurse throughout the voyage. He described the return trip in the same letter to Duchesne: 8
I returned in a merchant vessel from Marseilles, owned by the Bruny brothers, whereon they had placed as Supercargo, that is to say, entrusted with commerce, their nephew, M. Roux of Valbonne, who, after the captain, had the sole right to regulate the consumption of fresh water, which is very precious in a voyage of six months sailing .... through the torrid zone; so that if he had not taken it to heart to water these plants encased in a pot of soil, it would have been impossible for me to preserve them until our arrival at Marseilles, where there were five living ones, of which I had three and he two. I gave one of them on my arrival in Paris to my friend, M. Antoine Jussieu, to cultivate in the King's Garden, and one to M. Peletier of Souzy, our minister of fortifications. and kept the third for myself.
On his return, Frézier was honored by a presentation to Louis XIV, who had him explain the maps he had drawn. The king then marked his satisfaction with the mission by awarding Frézier 1,000 écus from the royal treasury.
Louis XIV died before Frézier's observations could be published so in 1716 the book was dedicated instead to the Duke of Orleans, the regent for young Louis XV. Frézier's Voyage to the South Sea was praised by such scientists and geographers as Halley, Reamur, and Robertson and in such publications as Scevari's Dictionary of Commerce, the Journal of Arevoux (the Jesuit critical literary publication) and in the Historical Atlas of Holland. Perhaps the greatest tribute was its translation into German, Dutch and English within three years after the original French edition.
Meanwhile, Garangeau, Frézier's superior at Saint-Malo, again requested his services for defense construction. In 1719 Frézier was sent as Engineer-in-Chief to Santo Domingo on a two-year assignment to fortify the island. There malaria nearly killed him but he was too useful to his superiors to permit his return until nine years later when he was sent first to Philipsbourg and then to Landau, Germany, where he built twenty-six defense structures. This last assignment was the basis for a characteristically scholarly and precise work applying theories of architecture to practical engineering. Frézier married, was commissioned a captain, and in 1739 was named Director of Fortifications for the whole of Brittany. He finally retired from his sixty-four years of service at the age of eighty-two. At eighty-seven he was still writing on such diverse subjects as navigation and landing methods for the Lucayes Islands, the aesthetics of architecture, and on the purification of unhealthy water which could make even sea water drinkable. Even when his sight weakened, five years before his death in 1773, he made himself read at least six hours a day, especially books on travel and history.
Activity had always characterized Frézier's life and even in his last years he lived at a pace one would associate with a far younger man. An example is his correspondence which was extensive and which included literary men as well as scientists. They consulted him with confidence and found him pleased to share his insights. Always one to insist upon precision, he scorned presumptuous ignorance. He disdained envy as well, calling it a great and humiliating weakness. His associates said he was as delighted with a discovery as the inventor himself. One biographer described him as the representative of the universal character of the enlightened eighteenth-century man .9 The Secretary of the Royal French Marine Academy, writing of Frézier in the flowery phrases of the era, said: "Amedee Francois Frézier has rendered his name dear to Letters, to Art and to Science, which he cultivated with success, to the Corps du Genie (Intelligence Corps), from which he acquired his fame, to the Marine Academy, of which he was the ornament for a long time, and to the Society of which he was the delight."10 This was the remarkable man who had the curiosity and initiative to transplant the first Frutillar from Chile to France.
What did the plant from Chile look like? What characteristics would it communicate to its offspring, F. ananassa? Comparing it to the familiar European wood strawberry, botanists noticed that its brownish green leaves, though the same size as F. vesca, were much stouter, thicker and more stiff and leathery, with big teeth and with prominent veins on the very pale underside. The runners were also much bigger and at least triple the length of those of the wood strawberry. "It is not rare to see the nodes of these runners borne at 15 or 18 inches from the old plant," Duchesne wrote of the plant in 1766. The hardy pedicels were almost ligneous. Another obvious difference was the heavy pubescence of the Frutillar, which was covered with long, appressed, whitish hairs on the underside of the leaves and especially on the stems and sepals. These sepals were numerous and remained spread out flat on unfertilized flowers but closed again on fertilized ones once the petals fell.
And then there were the few, but enormous, flowers: "One often sees that an écu of six francs cannot cover it," said Duchesne, describing the diameter as more than one and three-fifths inches." There were many petals, a single one equal in area to the entire flower of F. vesca. In cool sunny weather they gave off a strong perfume, which Dillenius also had noted in his Hortus Elthamensis: "Flores teneum Oxyacantha ordorem spirant." In the female flowers forty or fifty short stamens, instead of the usual twenty, pressed together in three or four mixed rows, and pointed in all directions around the young receptacle, itself the size of a small F. vesca fruit.
The fruits were proportionate to the flower in size, although Frézier found them to be smaller in Europe than those he had seen in Chile. The ovaries, though quite a distance from each other, formed only shallow pits in the solid flesh of the berry; each ovary was three to four times bigger than those of F. vesca, and a deep, dull red in color. In ripening, the berry was red above but yellowish-white below, with a most pleasant odor. The berries were commonly elongated and angular, some rounded and a bit pointed.
Another characteristic feature, and a remarkable one, was the strength of the pedicel. At the moment of ripeness, instead of hanging down with the weight of the fruit as in other strawberries, it bent upward so that the point of the berry faced toward the sun. The Frutillar began to flower in France at the time F. vesca bore its first ripe fruits and the berries were not mature until the end of June, a month later.
What happened to Frézier's F. chiloensis plants upon his return to Mar seilles in August 1714? As he wrote Duchesne in 1765, he gave two of the five plants to Mr. Roux de Valbonne, the officer in charge of the water supply, who had kept the plants alive by watering them during the long sailing. Another specimen went to the head of the King's Garden at Paris, Antoine de Jussieu. Frézier kept one plant for himself, and the remaining one was given to his superior, M. Pelletier de Souzy, the minister of fortifications at Brest. Between 1714 and the publication of Duchesne's monograph on the strawberry in 1766, a large prosperous strawberry industry developed at Brest, supplied by fruits from F. chiloensis pollinated by other species. Perhaps the plant sent to M. Pelletier de Souzy in Brest started this culture. Or perhaps Frézier's own plant was the mother of that industry. After publication of his book in 1716, Frézier returned to Saint-Malo in Brittany, in command of the construction of fortifications upon the request of M. Garangeau, his former patron. Was it then that he delivered runners from his Frutillar to the local gardeners of Brest, exciting them with his claims of the marvelous properties of his new strawberry? Or did he survey the Brittany coast until he decided that the port of Brest would best simulate the coastal climate of Concepción? He left for Santo Domingo in 1719, returned to France in 1726, and two years later he left for Germany where he remained until 1739, after which he returned to Brittany. Perhaps during one of these interludes the Chilean berry was introduced. In 1765, Frézier wrote Duchesne from Brest that "this city" and its vicinity are so well provided with strawberries that one finds them for sale at the market." 12 According to Duchesne, Frézier had himself cultivated the Frutillar after his return to France.
The imported Chilean strawberries had a difficult time in Europe at first. They grew vigorously, but even at Brest produced none of the fruit "as large as a hen's egg" which had recommended it to Frézier. Indeed at first the plants produced no fruits at all. Unwittingly Frézier had selected female plants in Chile; at least the five which reached France were female. The botanists of the King's Garden at Paris, always eager to receive and exchange new plants, preserved several specimens of F. chiloensis in their herbaria and, according to Duchesne, these were all female. Antoine de Jussieu, head of the King's Garden, and true to the international spirit of eighteenth-century science, wasted no time in sending propagations of his plants abroad. In 1720, just six years after Frézier's return, the great Dutch botanist Boerhaave, published a description of F. chiloensis grown from runners sent to Leyden, Holland, from the King's Garden in Paris. He designated it as "Fragaria crassis rugosis soliis flore semine carens" and called it the "Chili strawberry, without blooms or fruits."13
From Holland, Philip Miller introduced the plant to England. "I brought some of the plants from Holland, Anno 1727, which thrive and increase exceedingly, but as yet I have obtained no Fruit; the last Season, Anno 1729, they produced great Numbers of Flowers, which were larger than the Hautboy, Strawberry, in proportion to the Bulk of its Fruit; but I am in Hopes next Season to obtain some Fruit in Perfection: I observe they thrive best when they have only the Morning Sun, and do require frequent Waterings in dry Weather," wrote Miller in the 1731 edition of his Gardener's Dictionary. In the 1752 edition Miller was more exact about his source and explained that "in 1727 1 brought a parcel of the plants to England, which were communicated to me by Mr. George Clifford of Amsterdam, who had large beds of this Sort growing in his curious gardens at Hartecamp." Miller had given a specimen to Dillenius, assistant to James Sherard who owned one of most richly stocked gardens in the world at Eltham. Although the plant flowered in 1730, it was a female similar to Boerhaave's and bore no fruits. Thus Dillenius engraved a flowering specimen without fruits in the Hortus Elthamensis (1732), a descriptive catalogue of the plants in Sherard's garden ( Plate 4-2).
All the botanical gardens were having the same difficulties: Frézier's female plants seldom produced fruits. Duchesne, in 1766, was to explain the trouble. Female plants had to be fertilized with the pollen of other strawberries and not all strawberries could pollinate F. chiloensis. Only strawberries with large fruits like F. moschata, F. virginiana and later, F. ananassa were successful. Meanwhile, no European before Duchesne seemed aware of the separation of sexes in strawberries. Philip Miller had cautioned in 1759 that if the gardener was careless and selected strawberry plants at random, the majority of the plants would become barren. "These are generally called blind, which is when there are plenty of smaller flowers but no fruit produced," he wrote, and described such flowers as well-supplied with stamens but lacking female parts with few if any styles and producing deformed fruit at best.
It was Duchesne who taught that the male flowers Miller described were valuable as pollinators. Probably Frézier, anxious to select superior specimens to introduce to France, had collected those plants which bore the largest fruits among the cultivated Frutillars of Concepción. These must have been females since males would produce no fruit.
Eventually some F. chiloensis plants in Europe did bear. Although disappointed in his barren plants in London, Miller wrote in the same 1731 edition of the Dictionary that the plant "has produced Fruit several Years in the Royal Garden at Paris, where Monsieur Jussieu assured me, it was commonly as large as a small Apple." Two years later in his 1733 edition Miller could add: "and this season there has been Fruit in several Gardens near London," but for many years the English lacked the success and consequent appreciation for the Frutillar which the French showed. Successive editions of Miller's The Gardener's Dictionary are like the readings of a barometer measuring the rise and fall of England's affection for the Chile strawberry. The comments on F. chiloensis from the third edition of 1737 are an example:
I brought some of the Plants from Holland Anno 1727, which thrive and increase exceedingly; but these bear very indifferently and the Fruit being less delicate than the Hautboys (F. moschata), few Persons care to propogate this Sort in England. These plants have been placed in the Sun, and cultivated with Care, but have never succeeded where they have been thus treated. I have observed that they succeeded best where they have been grown under the Shade of trees, in a loamy Soil, and little more Care taken of them than to keep them clear from Weeds.
Three years later, in 1740, Miller observed that the Chile strawberry "is now but little esteemed in England, the Fruit being ill-tasted. This Kind has produced Fruit of Late Years in many Gardens; but in general the Fruit is not so large as those of the Globe-Hautboy Strawberry, and is of a very irregular Form."
In 1737 the Chile strawberry appeared in a descriptive catalogue of Clifford's garden at Hartecamp in Holland. The author of the Hortus Cliffortianus was none other than Linnaeus, the famed naturalist of Sweden. Linnaeus had recently received his medical degree in Holland and had then been hired by the wealthy Amsterdam banker, George Clifford, as his physician and botanist. Linnaeus cited first Frézier and then Dillenius and Boerhaave in describing the Chile strawberry but he called it Fragaria chiloensis instead of Fragaria chiliensis as named by Frézier. Perhaps Linnaeus thought the plant came from the island of Chiloe off the coast of Concepción, while Frézier had been careful to use chiliensis to designate the country itself.
In 1736 Linnaeus was sent to England to meet Philip Miller to whom Clifford had sent F. chiloensis and to whom he was later to send an early specimen of the modern strawberry, F. ananassa. Miller had been brought to London by Sir Hans Sloane to head the new London Apothecaries' Garden at Chelsea. The garden gained a leading position among the great botanical collections under Miller's supervision. Miller's Dictionary was for a long time the standard dictionary of English gardening, and its fame soon went beyond England. After the first awkward meeting with Miller, a great cooperation developed between Linnaeus and Miller, and the latter finally championed the Linnaean system of classification. Miller gave Linnaeus numerous specimens of plants for Clifford's garden as well as dried specimens for the herbarium. The close contact among the botanists of this period and their eagerness to exchange specimens from their collections were responsible for the rapid dissemination of the Chilean strawberry in Europe. Linnaeus enters the story again later. (See Plate 4-3.)
The French had much better luck than the English with F. chiloensis. The sharp-eyed gardeners of the Plougastel region of Brittany around Brest had observed that the Chile strawberry bore abundant fruit when F. moschata and F. virginiana were planted in between the rows of F. chiloensis. In a similar climate nearby at Cherbourg, M. des Nouettes-Grou wrote that he had been cultivating the Chile "with success by means of pollens from native berries which succeeded very well for me ... in 1758 and 1759." Two of his berries were 7 1/2 inches in circumference.14 The botanist Du Hamel observed in 1764 that "in the better tended plantings, half the strawberries were of an entirely different sort, which are called regionally "Barbary strawberries." These proved to be F. virginiana and F. moschata plants.
The French found that F. chiloensis had a very determined preference for a marine climate and its cultivation remained confined to Plougastel. Attempts to cultivate it in Anjou, Touraine, and the lower-Loire areas failed. For more than a century, until about 1875, the Plougastel's harvest supplied the cities of Brittany and the English markets as well. After 1875 the popularity of F. chiloensis began to diminish as new, large-fruited varieties, of which it was the mother, replaced it. In 1887, Mme. Elisa Vilmorin 15 recorded that the strawberry fields planted to F. chiloensis still covered one hundred and eighty acres, while by 1900, of the three hundred acres devoted to strawberries in Plougastel, only fifty acres were planted to the Chilean strawberry.
By the mid-1700's the strawberry from Chile was no longer simply a curiosity in the botanical collections of the wealthy and of the universities. It was beginning to be grown commercially around Brest, the only place in Europe where it succeeded. Its hybrids, which were accidental results of using F. virginiana as the pollinator for F. chiloensis (there is little evidence that the cross of F. chiloensis x F. moschata ever produced fertile plants), were more adaptable, and gardeners in England, Holland and France made careful selections for large-fruited varieties of F. ananassa, as the hybrid was called. This led to the gradual abandonment of its parent, F. chiloensis, except around Brest.
As Captain Frézier was central to the story of the introduction of F. chiloensis, so Antoine Nicolas Duchesne is central to the story of its hybridization which followed, for Duchesne was both an active experimenter and a chronicler of this period. Yet without European curiosity in New World botany, Frézier's five plants of F. chiloensis would not have been propagated and distributed so early to so many growers. For several centuries, large fruited strawberries might have remained exclusive to the western coasts of the Americas.
1 "Otra fruta que llaman Chili llegó al Cuzco el ano de 1557. Es de muy bien gusto y de mucho regalo. Nace en unas plantas bajas, casi tenidos por el suelo; tiene un granijado por cima como el madroño, y es del mismo tamaño, no redondo, sino algún tanto por longada en forma de corazon."
The "madrono" referred to by Garcilazo is the madrone or strawberry tree. Arbutus unedo. What Garcilazo called Chili was undoubtedly the Chilean strawberry. The original Spanish was obtained through the courtesy of Hector Lazo, a descendant of the father of Garcilazo, the Inca.
(Garcilazo de la Vega, "Los Comentarios Reales de los Incas." Chapter 11, Book 8, Part 1, 1606.)
2 Feuillée, Louis, Journal des Observations Physiques, Mathématiques et Botaniques, Volume I. Paris, 1714, p. 314-315.
3 Throughout the seventeenth century the Bourbon rulers of France had tried to break the powers of the Hapsburg Empire which surrounded them on all sides. Then in 1700 Charles II, king of Spain, died childless and left his regency to the grandson of Louis XIV of France. Louis XIV defended the rights of his grandson for eleven years against an alliance of Austria, England, Holland and Brandenburg, from the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession until its settlement in the Peace of Utrecht, 1713-1714. The condition of the peace was that France and Spain should remain forever disunited, although Louis XIV's grandson was permitted to retain the Spanish throne. The French king knew his influence would be limited to the lifetime of his grandson. Frézier's mission represented the French king's efforts to get the most out of a temporary advantage.
4 Most of this information on the early history of the Fréziers or Frazers came to the author via Charles Dyson of Scarsdale, New York, who is an expert on the clans of Scotland.
5 A Voyage to the South-Sea. London, 1717, p. 6.
6 Ibid., p. 75.
7 Duchesne, Antoine Nicolas, L'Histoire Naturelle des Fraisiers. Paris. 1766, p. 186.
8 Duchesne, op. cit., p. 182.
9 Nécrologe des Hommes Célébres de France. Paris, 1766.
11. Duchesne, op. cit., pp. 170-176.
12 Ibid., p. 187.
13 Boerhaave, Hermanno, Index Alter Plantarum Quae in Horto Academica. Lugduno-Batavo Aluntur, 1720, p. 165.
14 Ibid., p. 187.
15 Decaisne, Joseph, Le Jardin Fruitier du Muséum, Volume 9. Paris, 1862-1875.