British author Joanne Harris may be most associated with Chocolat, her novel turned film from the 2000s, but her strawberry prose is just as delicious.
In a follow-up novel of the story of mother and daughters who open a chocolate shop in France, Ms. Harris observed and described nature’s original and wild version of the popular plant: “It’s too early for strawberries, but the clearing is filled with their leaves and their little white flowers like fallen stars…. Somewhere fairies or goblins might live.”
If you know where to look, it is strawberry fields forever. I wasn’t expecting that experience at the airport last week, but somehow there they were: a gorgeous expanse of little white flowers running alongside the entrance road.
Running is exactly what these little plants do to spread, and they can cover a lot of ground. Perennial, persistent and petite describe North America’s native strawberry. Fragaria virginiana has only one strawberry surname, but many common forenames including Virginia, wild, scarlet, common and mountain strawberries. All of these describe one small but significant species.
Strawberry plants are celebrated as food and medicine and are found in nature, history and literature.
People have always been enamored of this wild plant for food. Indigenous consumption was recorded of both berries and leaves. Healing values are varied and range from detoxification and anti-aging to digestive benefits, and concoctions were conceived for treating sunburn, dysentery, gout, scurvy and bad breath.
The plant’s primary association was with the feminine. Supporting fertility and childrearing, strawberry pants were beloved and associated with Venus, Aphrodite, Freyja and the Virgin Mary. One origin myth describes how the first strawberry came to be when it grew from Earth Mother’s heart after she died giving birth to her twin sons.
Romantic love, too, has also long been associated with the strawberry. Another fable describes the creation of the original strawberry as the work of the sun in an effort to reunite the first man and woman after their first fight. Keeping this plant in the house reminds couples to live in harmony. A sweet way to ‘berry’ the hatchet.
The small gem-like fruit of the wild strawberry will emerge after the flowers fade and have been feeding creatures forever. Wildlife are usually the victors of the spoils. Birds, mammals, other insects and, of course, us, vie for those little red orbs, though we are least likely to reap the rewards when we compete. Beyond the berry, more than seventy species of butterfly and moth caterpillars use this plant as a host.
While wild strawberries have always been consumed as a food source and brought into human gardens, botanists domesticated and crossed this continent’s wild strawberry with a South American species to produce the big, bulbous, ruby red fruit sold today.
Production of the berries will come soon, but don’t miss the bevy of subtle white, five-petaled blossoms that are creeping along the ground. John Lennon suggested that “Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go,” though I contend those places are all better with strawberries.
These petit flowering plants are quite understated even when bountiful, flourishing in your lawn, across the fields and forest floors, roadsides and path sides and just about anywhere. May is the time to appreciate the floral part of this plant’s lifecycle, one that should not be missed any more than the fruit phase.
Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.
This article appears in May 15, 2026.