The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-05-17
THE PEERLESS strawberry.

The exquisite months Of May and June
surely breathe their poetic souls most gen.
| erously into the delicious strawberry and
| the beautiful rose-of one noble family and
| akin to the cherry, the plum, the pear and
! the apple. Perennially appropriate Is the
| comment of that humorous old English
worthy, DR.. William Butler, whose head
| once ornamented a tavern sign in Ivy
Lane:' Doubtless God could have made
a better berry, but doubtless God never
did" Thoreau called the strawberry "the
embodiment of that vernal fragrance with
which the air has teemed." Martha Booker
| Flint says it is ''the direct gift of mother
! earth-true ambrosia, the very breath of
summer. In sooth, the strawberry should
be gastroDomically classed apart with the
| lovely peach, as, in both cases 1t is almost
| impossible TO discover where the pleasure
Of the eye ends and the pleasure of the pal
ate begins. To the pathological palate, too,
the strawberry is most attractively set
| forth; the American scarlet strawberry Is
'Fragaria Virginiana,'' and '.Fragaria
vesca" is the Alpine. wood, and English
strawberry. Also, we have the strawber-
ry-bush, strawberry-tree, strawberry-pea,
strawberry-pear, and strawberry tomato.
| The earliest English mention of the
strawberry is reported of the tenth CEN
| fury, and the dispute still goes on whether
straw" or Anglo-Saxon "streow'' means
stray "strew.' straw" Henry VIII
could buy strawberries for his many wives
at fourpence bushel. The old Virginian
wild strawberry, Professor Blatchley tells
us, is still found wild, though not in abund-
ance, in all parts OF Indiana, while the
European strawberry grows wild only in
several counties, chiefly of Southern Indi-
ana. In Dakota prairie wagons roll with
dripping wheels through rich masses of
crushed wild strawberries, and In old New
York, in the time of ripe wild strawber-
ries, country gallants, armed with bottles
of cream and with parcels of sugar, with
their sweethearts mounted behind them on
their horses, rushed violently into the
fields"
Technically, an old Kitchen gardener
states. the strawberry is not berry at
all, but "a fleshy receptacle studded with
Seeds" Wholesome and luscious. however,
it certainly is widely distributed by a
bountiful hand over nearly every part of
the world"
In the first half of the last century. the
strawberry, in common with many other
ever. being grown only in small lots for
home consumption, or mere ornamental
achievement. Only two fruits, muskmelons
and apples, received premiums at Indi-
ana's first State fair, in 1852 In 1s4S. In
Marion county. apples were IS cents
bushel, peaches so cents and Strawberries
had no mention. When apples were 10
cents bushel in Bartholomew county. on
quart: while in Noble county apples were
| 81, peaches % cents per bushel, and straw
berries were 3 cents a quart. Beef was
then cents and pork cents a pound. The
Eastern States were then, Extraordinarily,
more wideawake or had more leisure for
experimental gardening. and strawberries
in Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania were
Is cents a quart, 12h cents in New York,
10 cents in New Jersey and cents in vir-
ginia. In other Southern States
they were not cultivated or marketed at
all. In 1862 a Washington report an
| nounces 1.-The constantly increasing
attention the superb strawberry
is each year receiving from the American
people," and since that period the straw
| berry, among small fruits. has been queen
of the American market. The old-time
strawberries were few in number and in
name: among these are recorded the Early
May, Hoveys Seeding. Ross Phoenix. Prize
Seeding and Monthly Copii-an Alpine ber-
~. In the sixties a northern Ohio man
grew strawberries thirty miles from any
town, and peddled them in his farm wagon.
in town and in country. selling twenty
| bushels day at 20 cents per quart In 1s47
New York protest was made against
strawberries coming TO market in large
tubs. crushed and bruised. to be ladled or
spooned in quart measures. mashed mat
ter" From this. the portable box arose.
Now the great, rich, exquisite. fragrant
strawberry wave owns the United States.
Like American literary development, its
origin and causes are not TO be traced to
their mysterious sources; the wave rolls
north and then south again, with delight
ful eddies and cross currents. which refresh