Of the wild foods wild berries rank as most popular and of the berries the strawberry must reign supreme for flavour. British Columbia has strawberries throughout and the most abundant and tasty of our three native species is wild strawberry, Fragaria virginiana . These perennial herbs form loose bluish green carpets speckled by clean white flowers. Wild strawberries arise from short thick rootstocks anchored to the ground by tough wiry roots.
Large teeth line the edge of the often bluish green leaflets.
Horizontal runners, called stolons, arch from the parent plant. Where they touch down, a new daughter plant develops. Small leafy sepals and bracts form a ring at the base of each flower. Within this cup are five bright white rounded petals. At the base of the petals, a whorl of stamens encircles the raised swollen end of the stem, a structure technically called the receptacle.