VARIETY ALBION

History

The story is full of legends and myths linked to this fruit. In ancient Rome, the strawberry was linked to the Adonis festivities; since the legend indicates that the origin of this fruit is given to the death of Adonis, when Venus cries tears that when touching the ground become these strawberries. Strawberry is a plant of the Rosaceae family, of the Fragaria genus (from the Latin fraga: fragrant).

From that same Latin root, comes the French name "fraise", from which the word "strawberry" was derived. The fruit of this plant is a compound fruit, botanically called "ether". In this type of fruit, the flower has a receptacle with numerous ovaries. When pollinated, the flower receptacle widens (fleshy part of red color) showing around small achene-like fruits (they are the "little seeds" of brown color that we see outside).

European strawberries (Fragaria vesca and F. moschata) were different from American strawberries, which are larger and less fragrant. In America, Chilean (Fragaria chiloensis) and North American (Fragaria virginiana) strawberries were consumed, but in the 18th century an explorer and merchant in the service of Louis XIV, Amedée-François Frézier, brought several copies of the Chilean strawberry to France, which in In 1764 the still emerging French botanist Antoine Nicolas Duchesne would cross with the European strawberry Fragaria moschata and then with the Fragaria virginiana, generating the hybrid we consume now (Fragaria x ananassa).