Strawberries For A Sunday Post

I was in the woods last week and found a teeny,tiny, little, berry. I thought it looked like a strawberry. I sampled it and it was sooooo sweet. They are growing all over the woods. One of the bonuses of the woods is the natural bounty you come across. Along with swatting mosquitoes I enjoyed finding this new surprise this year. Maybe it was in the wildflower seed that I sowed last fall. Wild strawberries are popular berries growing wild in temperate climates. Medieval records mention that these berries were used for food and medicine. As long ago as the 1400s, wild strawberries were planted in English herb gardens. These berries were growing in the New World when the colonists settled here. They found that the natives collected large quantities of these berries, eating them fresh and drying some for winter use. They must have had oodles of them. The colonists soon were cultivating these American varieties in their gardens. They even sent species of these plants back to England. Many of the commercial cultivated strawberries today are hybrids from plants developed from wild North American varieties. They have been used for many purposes over the years - strawberry wine, strawberries and cream, strawberry jams and jellies, strawberry shortcake, etc. Strawberries are high in vitamin C. The leaves, nutritious, too, have been used for strawberry tea, a drink rich in this vitamin. I have recently read that wild strawberries are full of antioxidants and are good for fighting cancer. So, I think that I will let the birds eat their fill and maybe they'll sample my mosquitoes at the same time.
Balisha