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Strawberry Facts and Trivia
Read this, and you’ll know more about strawberries than most grown-ups do!North Carolina Numbers
- North Carolina is the fourth largest producer of strawberries in the country.
- Almost all strawberries grown in North Carolina are eaten right here in the state.
- Growers who plant on plastic set out about 17,500 plants per acre each fall.
(Do you know how big an acre is? It’s about three-fourths of a football field.)- One acre can yield as much as 20,000-30,000 pounds of strawberries over the season.
NC Strawberry History
Back in the early 1900s, the Chadbourn area of Columbus County, NC was a major strawberry shipping area. Growers there shipped out as much as 180 railroad boxcar loads in a single day in 1907!
More Numbers
- A strawberry flower usually has 5-7 petals.
- It takes about a month from when the flower first opens for the fruit to become ripe and ready to eat.
- The average strawberry has 150-200 seeds on its surface.
Strawberry Science
Strawberries are in the same botanical family as roses, apples, pears, peaches, blackberries, and raspberries. The family is called Rosaceae.The strawberry’s closest edible relatives are blackberries and raspberries. We’re glad that strawberries don’t have thorns, too!
Although strawberry seeds can grow to make new plants, most strawberry plants reproduce by runners. The plant sends out long stems—kind of like tentacles—that form small daugher plants at their tips. These daughter plants put down roots and send out more runners and form more daughter plants, and then more daughter plants and morerunners and more daughter plants… You get the idea!
Strawberry plants are perennial. Though most strawberry growers replant yearly or every few years, strawberry plants can live for many years. If they are in a good place and don’t get attacked by diseases, deer, or other problems, they form matted colonies that can live as long as 50 years.
A World Traveller
The modern cultivated strawberry was developed in Europe, but none of the three wild European kinds (or species) of strawberries is a parent ofthe strawberry we eat today. Instead, it is a cross between the native North American wild strawberry, Fragaria virginiana, and the South American wild strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis. European travellers had brought back plants from North and South America and planted them in their gardens. At first the crossing just happened because the two kinds were near each other. Then, people began to cross the two species on purpose.
Today, strawberries are grown on every continent except Antartica.
For more strawberry info and trivia than you can imagine, visit Strawberry Jamm