Believe it or not, wild strawberries were selectively bred to give us what we know is the

garden strawberry and we have the founding director of the strawberry center at Cal Poly State University to talk to us about it today.

We have Gerald Holmes back on the show.

So, you know, I've grown some wild varieties, Gerald, and of course I've grown some garden varieties and where did you get

Where did you get wild ones? Well that's the thing is I was about to say I don't know that

They're true true wild I think they're sort of advertised as like

semi-unimproved type varieties that have probably been through some level of

domestication is my guess like like an alpine strawberries so these are very small ones.

So maybe that's where I was going to start is where did the strawberry come from

originally.

Strawberries are native to many areas of the world.

So if you look at a map of where all the wild strawberries are grown, it's mostly in the northern

hemisphere. And there are also wild strawberries in the southern hemisphere,

but not nearly as diverse.

So all along the Pacific coast of the Americas, you have wild strawberries.

That is the Fregaria chiluensis species, the beach strawberry. And then on the east coast of North America and all over

North America and Canada, you have Fragaria, Virginia, the Woodland strawberry.

And those two were actually accidentally cross-pollinated in a French botanic garden in Brittany, France.

And, you know, this was during 1500s

1700s 17 hundreds explorers were traveling all over the world

and collecting plant material and bringing it back to the old world

putting into these gardens and they just so happened to have a Chiloensis from

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