April 2, 2025 • 37 mins
The story of how strawberries went from small forage item to one of the world’s most popular fruits – though they're technically not a true fruit – involves lots of crossbreeding experimentation, as you might expect, but also a bit of spy craft.
Research:
- “A Transatlantic Tango: The Story of the Strawberry. Royal Horticultural Society. https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-your-own/features/history-of-the-strawberry#:~:text=It%20is%20hard%20to%20believe,back%20on%20fortifications%20near%20Concepci%C3%B3n.
- Allen, Mike. “The 18th-Century Spy Who Gave Us Big Strawberries.” Atlas Obscura. Nov. 16, 2017. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/big-strawberries-spy-chile-france
- Barnes, Monica. “Frezier, Amédée François (1682-1773).” American Museum of Natural History. January 2008. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280567727_Frezier_Amedee_Francois_1682-1773
- Darrow, George M. “The Strawberry: History, Breeding and Physiology.” New York. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1966. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/strawberryhistor00darr/mode/1up
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "strawberry". Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Jun. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/plant/strawberry
- Folta, K.M., Barbey, C.R. “The strawberry genome: a complicated past and promising future.” Hortic Res 6, 97 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41438-019-0181-z
- Grubinger, Vern. “History of the Strawberry.” University of Vermont. June 2012. https://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/strawberryhistory.html
- Hancock, J.F. “Strawberries.” Oxford University Press. 2000.
- Petruzzello, Melissa. "list of plants in the family Rosaceae". Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 Mar. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/list-of-plants-in-the-family-Rosaceae-2001612
- Sevilla, Elisa, and Ana Sevilla. “STRAWBERRY.” New World Objects of Knowledge: A Cabinet of Curiosities, edited by Mark Thurner and Juan Pimentel, University of London Press, 2021, pp. 207–12. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1vbd275.34
- “Strawberry Facts.” University of Florida Gulf Coast Research and Education Center. https://gcrec.ifas.ufl.edu/fruit-crops/strawberries/strawberry-facts/
- Sytsma, Kenneth J.. "Rosaceae". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Feb. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/plant/Rosaceae
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Tracy, have you noticed that strawberries are kind of having
a moment.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm gonna be honest, I haven't, just because I'm not
aware of anything happening fashionably.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Do you know what it is? It's also just that
you're not a rabid consumer the way I am. Okay,
Holly buys a lot of things she doesn't mean, but
strawberries are. They're having a moment. If you look at
clothing or home design goods that are out this year,
strawberries are everywhere. I literally got an email promotion for
like plush strawberry pillows. Oh my goodness. It's like, all right,
(00:54):
humans have been enjoying strawberries around the world for thousands
of years, but as a cultivated plant, they're actually pretty new.
The story of how they went from a small forage
item to one of the world's most popular fruits. There
is a technicality in there regarding that designation that we're
going to talk about in just a moment, but that
story involves a lot of crossbreeding experimentation as you would expect,
(01:18):
but what I love about it is there's also a
bit of spycraft. I didn't mean to pick another French thing.
I really just wanted to learn more about strawberries because
they were in my face everywhere. But that's what we're
talking about today.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Strawberries are actually part of the rose family, from the
family rose a cia. If that seems surprising, the rose
family is really quite massive. It contains four subfamilies, more
than ninety genus categories, and roughly twenty five hundred species.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
A rose is.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
In the genus Rosa. We think of it as a flower,
but rose are also a fruit. The Roseesia family also
contains almonds, pears, and apples, lots of other fruits as well. Strawberries,
which are rich and vitamin see, are in the genus Frigaria.
So the seeds of the strawberry, if you've ever seen one,
(02:17):
are of course on the outside, and that makes it
unique in the fruit world. But it's actually not really
a fruit or a berry at all. A strawberry, the
thing we eat and what we think of as the strawberry,
is actually the end of the plant's stamen, right it's
the receptacle that receives pollen. So if you look at
(02:38):
a strawberry flour, there's a nodule at the center, and
that is the receptacle, and it's that nodule that eventually
grows into the fleshy thing we eat, provided it's been pollinated.
And the strawberry is sometimes called an accessory fruit because
of this, and each of those seeds on the outside
is the actual fruit, known as a chienes, although we
(02:59):
wouldn't think of them fruit because they're not delicious. I mean,
there might be someone that thinks strawberry seeds are delicious,
but I've never met one. And an average strawberry has
as many as two hundred of these not really seeds
on its skin, and those can be used to grow
new plants, but the more common way for new plants
to form is actually through runners. So a healthy plant
(03:22):
will send out shoots called stolens, and those who will
root when they touch the ground, and then a new
plant will grow there. Strawberries have not been cultivated in
the sense that we know them now for really all
that long, only about two hundred and fifty years, but
of course they've been around for a lot longer than that.
If you've ever seen strawberries growing in the wild, or
(03:45):
even if you've grown some from seed, those were probably
a lot smaller than the ones you might buy at
a grocery store. And that's what strawberries are like without
human intervention in breeding and cultivation. But even before humans
knew how to grow big, juicy strawberries, they really loved them.
Horticultural biologist James F. Hancock notes in his book on Strawberries, quote,
(04:10):
the ease with which strawberries can be collected from the
wild may actually have delayed their cultivation until almost modern times.
Naturally occurring strawberries have been enjoyed in recorded history since
at least ancient Rome, and probably longer, but that's the
first time we have a record of them. It's estimated
(04:30):
that people started domesticating strawberries, growing them on purpose but
not messing with their genetics, about two thousand years ago,
and that seems like a long time, but if you
compare that to the domestication of grain, which started roughly
ten thousand years ago, it's obviously not that long. And
even so, these were in all likelihoods just clippings or
(04:51):
transplants of the small, previously forged strawberries that we mentioned
a moment ago, and again not the fat, juicy ones.
Larger versions seen in markets today are the ones that
we mentioned as being cultivated in the last two hundred
and fifty years, and we'll get to how those came
about in just a bit. Avid mentioned strawberries in his writings,
(05:13):
and so did Virgil, but these mentions were not about
them as food, more about them as ornamentals and identifiers.
For example, in Avid's Metamorphoses, strawberries come up twice, once
in a line where he just mentions the gathering of
mountain strawberries, and another where character of Polypemus says to
(05:33):
his estranged lover quote, with thine own hands, thou shalt
thyself gather the soft strawberries growing beneath the woodland shade.
Pliny the Elder mentions the strawberry in Natural History as
a plant native to Italy, but he also seems to
confuse it with another plant with a similar name. In
(05:54):
the same book, and in Virgil's work Eclogues, written in
the first cent BCE, he notes the boys that gather
flowers and strawberries low hid within the grass a serpent lies.
It's a warning about snakes more than it's about the strawberry.
The scant other mentions of strawberries and writing before the
(06:15):
fourteenth century tended to be about the appearance of the
berries or the flowers rather than their edible potential.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And even once people did start eating them or consuming
them in other ways, strawberries were just as likely to
be consumed for health reasons as for having any kind
of sweet fruit, and all parts of the plant have
been used in various treatments. So there are mentions of
strawberries being used to treat diarrhea, gout, indigestion, skin irritations, sunburn, pimples,
(06:47):
and yellow teeth in various medical texts throughout history, and
these uses have some solid scientific basis, although those early
users of strawberries as medicine wouldn't have had the data
we have today. To Turk heard to you right now,
we know that strawberries are, as we mentioned earlier, loaded
with vitamin C and also full like acid, antioxidants and potassium,
(07:09):
as well as just being full of fiber.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Where the name strawberry comes from is a matter of speculation,
and the theory is very quite a lot One idea
is that because they grow on the ground, they may
have often been seen growing in straw. Another is that
the berries might have been threaded on straw to be
easy to carry and sell, or maybe that they were
(07:33):
stored on beds of straw for transport to markets. Another,
and one that maybe makes the most sense, is that
they were first called strawberries because of the way that
they grew strewn about the ground, or maybe because they
ripened at the same time as hay did, and then
that eventually the name shifted to a different vowel in
(07:55):
the first syllable. I have seen the speculation that maybe
those little seed like bits on the outside looked like
straw dust to people, and that was maybe the source
of it. But anyway, the first known use of the
word strawberry comes from a pictorial vocabulary of the latter
fifteenth century. In the fourteenth century, strawberries had become popular
(08:20):
enough in France that the transition was made from foraging
them to gardening them. This was a strawberry species that
had been found in the woods fragaria vesca, which people
started to purposely grow near their homes for easy access,
Although they still were often sought out for their visual
appeal and not necessarily for eating. There are also many
(08:43):
instances of strawberries appearing in religious art in Europe in
its early years of cultivation. Strawberries appear in imagery throughout
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, often symbolizing righteousness. In thirteen
sixty eight, strawberries were included in the gardens of the
At this time it was still the main palace of
(09:03):
the King of France, who is Charles the Fifth, and
at the King's request, royal gardener Jean Dudoit incorporated twelve
hundred strawberries into the garden's design. I bet that was
so pretty, yeap. By the fourteen hundred, strawberries were being
sold by street vendors in London, and by the fifteen hundreds,
(09:23):
another species Fugaria muscata, also known as the musk strawberry,
had made its way into gardens as well. Strawberries were
grown in other European countries in addition to England and France.
Shakespeare's Richard the Third includes a mention of strawberries by
the Duke of Gloucester, who described seeing them in the
(09:43):
garden of the Bishop of Ely and asks that the
Bishop sent him some. By the time Shakespeare wrote that
play in fifteen ninety seven, strawberries had been extremely popular
in England for decades. King Henry the eighth was a
big fan. They were described does a medicinal remedy in
the fifteen twenty sixth book The Great herbal and were
(10:05):
discussed at length in a fifteen thirty sixth book, The
Natcheri Usturpium Libri, which was written by a botanist named Druelius.
The strawberry had also been classified as a plant that
was appropriate for women to cultivate in the fifteen fifty
seven book Five hundred Points of Good Husbandry. By that
(10:26):
point there was a clear division in writings between strawberries
that were purposely grown versus strawberries that were naturally occurring,
and France had continued to embrace the strawberry into the
sixteenth century. Henry the fourth of France's personal physician wrote
about them in the fifteen sixties. Their cultivation was described
(10:47):
in detail in the fifteen seventy eight writing Le Criculture
re Maison rustique, written by Jean le Beau and Charles Etienne,
and in this book that duo recommended that fields should
be planted with rawberries every third year as a way
to keep them fertile. Across the Atlantic, North America had
its own native strawberry, the Fragaria virginiana or Virginia strawberry.
(11:13):
Sometime in the seventeenth century, the Virginia strawberry made its
way to Europe. How that happened exactly is a little unclear,
but as Europe already loved strawberries, this new variety was
embraced and it started to be actively cultivated and crossed
with others, creating more than two dozen new species, but
(11:34):
these were still in terms of the fruit on the
small side.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
In seventeen fourteen, something happened that changed the strawberry forever.
The short version is that a native Chilean species known
as Fragaria chiloensis made its way to Europe. But the
story is much more interesting than that, and we're going
to talk about it after we pause for a sponsor break.
(12:06):
Fragaria chili insis is naturally a bit larger than the
strawberries that Europeans and North Americans were accustomed to in
the early eighteenth century. It was more than likely cultivated
by the mapuch and Huilich people for centuries before Europeans
ever knew about it. When conquistador Francisco Pizarro's forces conquered
(12:26):
Chile in the mid sixteenth century, they took some of
these strawberries with them to Cuzco, Peru. There the fruit
was written about by Garcelazzo de la Vega. His description
was of a heart shaped fruit that had seeds on
the outside. Although it's clear that's talking about a strawberry.
He called it by a name that we associate with
(12:47):
something very different. He called it the Chile. Other Europeans
who traveled to Chile also made note of this fruit,
comparing it to its European counterparts, but all was mentioning it,
mentioning that it had better flavor and was larger, some
comparing them to the size of large nuts. These Chilean
strawberries are described as being different colors in different people's accounts,
(13:11):
ranging from red to white, with basically every gradation in between.
But for some reason, no one writing these descriptions ever
thought to bring one back to Europe.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
These accounts, and particularly won by French priest Louis Foyer,
got the attention of France's King Louis the fourteenth. He
wanted to know more about this delicious berry, so he
found an engineer who could be sent to the Americas
to assess the forces of the Spanish colonies there. Louis
(13:43):
the fourteenths grandson, the Duke of Anjous, had become King
Philip the Fifth of Spain following the War of Spanish Succession,
so this spy work was more about making sure things
were good and that Louis the Fourteenth's financial and political
backing of Philip the Fifth were worthwhile, as well as
ensuring that France understood the situation completely in case everything
(14:06):
went sideways on the global stage. So even though Spain
and France were allies at this time, this was still
a secret mission. But the selected spy was also tasked
with collecting information and samples of the plant life of
South America. Depending on the source you read, was possibly
(14:26):
also keeping an eye out for the amazing strawberry that
Fuia and others had written about. Yes, there's not a
clear line of evidence that says that that it was
a straw was like, go get me some strawberries, but
it does seem like he was very intrigued by them,
(14:47):
and this person certainly does get some That spy that
we're talking about was a thirty two year old lieutenant
colonel named Amade Flansois Flesier. Flesier was born in sixteen
two in Chamberry, Savoy, which is in the eastern part
of France. It's about three hundred kilometers from the Swiss border. Initially,
(15:08):
the path that Amade Francois was expected to follow in
terms of education was one that was going to lead
him to the legal profession, which is what his father did.
But Fresier was not interested in the law. He was
interested in science, and he managed to convince his father
that he should go to Paris to study that instead
of law. In his studies, he focused on navigation and astronomy,
(15:32):
and he wrote his thesis on the relationship.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Between the two. And when he had completed his education
in Paris, he then spent time in Italy, where he
also indulged his interest in architecture and art and studied
those disciplines during his time there, but he didn't immediately
translate his education into a strictly scientific vocation. In seventeen hundred,
(15:55):
at the age of eighteen, Fresier joined the military, enlisting
with the Army of France, but he still did keep
his scientific work going, really for no other reason than
to occupy himself. He had a lot of free time
in the infantry. He wrote a paper on pyrotechnics, including
instructions on the manufacture of fireworks. But this did actually
(16:17):
advance his military career, as did mention the possible uses
of fireworks by the military. So this landed him a
position as a military engineer. That position was part of
the intelligence branch, and that's how he came to be
the man for the job that Louis the fourteenth had
in mind. His varied knowledge of navigation, explosives, and science
(16:40):
led to him being selected by his commanding officers as
the man they recommended. He sailed out on January seventh,
seventeen twelve, when Frasier boarded the ship the Saint Joseph
headed for South America. He knew that he would be
undercover as he completed this mission. He arrived in Concepts,
Chile on June sixteenth, and he couldn't exactly hide, so
(17:04):
instead he created an alternate backstory for himself and posed
as a merchant trader. This persona made it possible for
him to travel openly and to visit places under the
guise of mere curiosity instead of performing reconnaissance. For two
and a half years he toured Peru and Chile, feigning
(17:24):
to be a merchant and a tourist, all the while
documenting the fortifications of the Spanish military. He made detailed
maps of the Spanish colonial forts, with detailed accounts of
their artillery and their weak points where an attack might
be mounted, as well as their potential roots of escape,
and accompanying those maps and accounts, he included information about
(17:46):
the surrounding areas, such as the indigenous populations, the municipal governments,
religious practices of the locals, etc.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
These were cultivated strawberries in soil that Frazier described as
quote extraordinarily fertile. He wrote of the location, quote there
they plant whole fields with a sort of strawberry rushes
differing from ours, and that the leaves are rounder, thicker,
and more downy. The fruit is generally as big as
(18:15):
a walnut, and sometimes as a hen's egg, of a
whitish red, and somewhat less delicious of taste than our
wood strawberries. Besides these, there is plenty in the woods
of our European kind. Frasier also noted in the description
that he had collected some of these plants for the
King's garden. He also included a life size drawing of
(18:38):
the strawberries. He described this drawing showed them full of fruit,
but not showing the plant's flowers. When Frasier returned to
France on August seventeenth, seventeen fourteen, he carried with him
five of the strawberry plants which he had cared for
on the voyage back across the Atlantic. This was no
small feet. Listen, if you've ever transported plants, you know
(19:02):
there are dangers, and in addition to all of the
jostling that a plant might meet at sea, water was
rationed on this trip, so prioritizing the plant's need for
it had required careful calculation in some assistance from a
crew member who will mention in just a moment. Fresier
was honored by Louis the fourteenth for this work, with
(19:24):
a cash reward for the many maps he returned with
and of course those strawberries. Amedi Fresier wrote a book
about his travels titled Account of the Voyage from the
South Sea to the coasts of Chile, Peru, and Brazil,
made during the years seventeen twelve, seventeen thirteen, and seventeen fourteen.
(19:45):
Louis the fourteenth did not live long enough to see
this published. He died on September first, seventeen fifteen, which
was the year before it was finished, so he really
didn't get to see the full results of the spy
mission or the fruit that came from it. A lot
of people got to read about it, though, because Frasier's book,
which corrected a number of map errors made by his
(20:06):
predecessor Lui Flier, and caused an ongoing feud between those
two men that was translated into English, Dutch, and German.
Monica Barnes, writing for the American Museum of Natural History
in two thousand and eight, noted of this popular text quote,
most of the information in Frasier's text is superficial, obviously biased,
(20:29):
and available from other sources. However, during the second and
third decades of the eighteenth century, there was little information
on western South America available to readers outside the Spanish
speaking world. To a certain extent, Frasier filled that gap.
The great strength of his work lies not in its narrative,
(20:49):
but in its many excellent illustrations.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
The illustrations are very good. So of those five plants
that we mentioned that he brought back, only one of
them actually went to the king, or more specifically, to
the King's gardener in Paris, Antoine de Jusieux. Remember, strawberries
readily reproduce and spread through runners, so that one plant
led to many, and in addition to the King's plant,
(21:14):
Fresier kept one for himself, he gave one to his boss,
Monsieur Pelletier, and he gave two to a Monsieur Rux,
who had been in charge of cargo on the voyage
to France and who had been very key to making
sure the plants got water. But though all of these
plants produced new plants through runners, what they weren't producing
(21:36):
was fruit, because, as it turned out, the Chilean strawberry
was a species that has male plants and female plants,
as many strawberries are, and you need both of those
to achieve pollination and produce fruit.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
It's long been presumed that Fresier, and wanting to bring
the best plants back to France, naturally selected ones that
bore large fruit that meant they were all female. Although
Jesu had shared the runners of the King's plant with
other gardeners both in France and abroad, they just couldn't
get them to produce any fruit, except occasionally very small, misshapen,
(22:14):
and incomplete ones. There were a lot of studies made
of the plants, with details about their large flowers and
stout leaves, and all of this was recorded and analyzed,
but there was just no fruit. One Dutch botanist called
it the Chili strawberry without blooms or fruits in his notes.
They were taken to gardeners in England who tried to
(22:36):
solve the puzzle. Some experimenters got really good at producing large,
healthy blooms, but that was all the success they could
really achieve. By the seventeen forties, a lot of gardeners
had grown tired of trying to get something out of
the Chilean plants, and in England they had fallen out
of favor.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
But the strawberry was not abandoned by every hopeful horticulturist.
We'll talk about the breakthrough that offered some hope for
the almost mythical berries that Fresier had touted. After we
paused for a sponsor break. In France, some gardeners were
(23:21):
managing to produce fruit from Fresier's plants, although not very many.
There are notes of a Monsieur Denuete Greux, who reported
that he had managed to get some very large berries,
some with a circumference of seven point five inches, by
crossing the Chilean plant with quote pollens from native berries.
(23:41):
Fifty years after Fresier's plants arrived in Europe, someone produced
large fruit from a Chilean strawberry and presented a bowl
of that fruit to King Louis the fifteenth on July sixth,
seventeen sixty four. That person was a teenager. He was
just seventeen, and his name was Antoine Kolas Dushane, and
he got his strawberries by crossing the Chilean strawberries with
(24:05):
musk strawberries. Dushane, who was in line to inherit the
job of superintendent of the King's buildings from his father,
had learned a great deal about botany from the younger
brother of the King's Paris gardener. That brother's name was
Bernard de Jasieux, and Dushane was building on the work
of other gardeners and botanists, and because of this gift
(24:27):
to the King, he was given funding from the King
to continue this work, and he used that funding to
produce what would become a foundational text on strawberry cultivation.
He also, at the King's request, collected specimens of all
the known species of strawberry to be part of the
gardens at Versailles.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
His revelation regarding the sex of the plants had come
on May twenty ninth, seventeen sixty four, when he had
a Fragaria chiluensis sent to him from the Versailles garden.
It had already bloomed and no berries were growing on it,
and he was able to see that these flowers were
female without any male Chilean plants. He placed it near
(25:09):
a male musk strawberry, which he had noticed had some
similarities to the Chilean import and by June sixth, just
a week later, one of the receptacles had started to swell.
It had been pollinated. This was the experiment that led
to the berries that he presented to the King. Figuring
out the key to consistent strawberries and their fertility did
(25:32):
not happen instantly, though. Those beautiful berries that the seventeen
year old Dushane brought to Versailles had not been able
to reproduce. They didn't produce viable seeds.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Dushane dedicated himself to learning basically everything known about the
strawberry and all of its varieties, as he also experimented
with different iterations of cross pollination. He also consulted with
well known scientists, including Linnaeus as he worked through his experiments,
both for advice and kind of as a sort of
(26:06):
peer review of his observations. But even Linnaeus was unconvinced
of this idea of separate male and female plants, and
he thought that perhaps Dushane had been observing strawberries that
were frostbitten or damaged in some other way. When Duchane
wrote his book about his work, he noted, quote no
one I believe suspected before me the separations of the
(26:29):
sexes in the capiton. And through working with his own
experiments and the information he collected from other horticulturists, he
was able to figure out that the greatest success in
cross pollination happened when the female Chilean strawberries were combined
with male Virginia strawberries. Large fruit was the consistent result,
(26:51):
and that resulting fruit bore seeds, and those seeds produced
plants that could self pollinate. He had created a new
species of strawberry, which he called Fragaria ananasa. So ananasa
is a reference to pineapples, because these resulting berries smelled
to dushane like pineapple, and the Fragaria ananasa is the
(27:13):
strawberry that we eat today.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
The success of the combination of the two North American
strawberry species has led to the theory that these two
species were possibly originally from the same species, likely one
that originated in Asia, and that these two lines developed
in the separate climates of Chile and then farther north
in North America. If that's the case, the two plant
(27:39):
species went on a huge journey before being finally brought
back together in France. So if you speak French, you
may have been thinking throughout all of this that because
of this extended spy mission, the word fres which means strawberry,
was applied to the beloved fruit as an honor to
the man who brought the Chilean samples back to the
(28:00):
French king. But in a hilarious twist, that is actually
the opposite of what happened. Fresier's family already had an
association with the strawberry going quite away's back, and the
name Fresier had been gifted to them by a previous
king of France. So this story goes all the way
back to the tenth century, when one of amide Frasier's ancestors,
(28:24):
Julius du Bery, which is hilarious that he was already
called Berry, served King Charles the Third strawberries at the
end of a banquet as a gift. Not only was
the king delighted, but his Italian guest, Cardinal Clemens of
Monte Alto, was bowled over and described these berries as
superior to any that could be found in Italy. So
(28:46):
in thanks for making France look very good with a
foreign official, Charles the Third knighted Julius de Berry and
bestowed the name fres Strawberry upon him, as well as
giving the family coat of arms strawberry blossoms, and then
over time Frez shifted to Fresier. So in terms of lore,
(29:08):
it almost seems like Ami Day was destined to be
Louis the fourteenth Strawberry Guy. As for Fresier's life, host
strawberry retrieval. It was a full one. He went back
across the Atlantic in seventeen nineteen, this time as chief
engineer at Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic. He returned
to Europe and oversaw the building of a reported twenty
(29:31):
six defense structures. He got married and had a family,
and he continued working, rising higher in his career until
he finally retired at the age of eighty two. But
he continued to write and read a great deal and
died in seventeen seventy three at the age of ninety one,
having been celebrated for a wide variety of achievements. Yeah,
(29:53):
he's one of those people that was pretty recognized as
like an icon and a sage. It is t time
he got to enjoy the benefit of his reputation while
he was still alive. Antoine Nicola Dushane continued to experiment
with strawberries and other plants and published a lot of
books about his work. He was able, for example, to
(30:16):
identify the optimal temperatures at which strawberries would produce, and
eventually also developed a master diagram of the theoretical genealogical tree,
which included all of the known types of strawberries and
how he believed they developed from a single origin point.
When the French Revolution of seventeen eighty nine erupted, Duchane
(30:37):
lost his post, and because he was so connected to
the royal family, he was in real danger of being guillotined.
He did manage to ride out the conflict with his life, though,
and he turned to teaching once things had settled down.
But after that his life became sort of a series
of bad money management, sorrow at the loss of his
(30:58):
wife and daughter, ventually rapidly declining health. He died in
eighteen twenty seven after a series of strokes, just shy
of his eightieth Birthdayshane saw in his lifetime the benefit
of his work in strawberry breeding. Before he died, many
many gardeners throughout Europe were implementing the information he had
(31:20):
developed to produce big, juicy, self fertile strawberry crops. Dishes
featuring strawberries became luxury items, with strawberries and cream being
especially popular. Doushane's legacy is still part of every supermarket
strawberry we eat. The USDA estimates that ninety four percent
(31:41):
of all US households consumed strawberries in some form each year,
with each person eating an estimated four point eighty five
pounds on average annually. The US produces three billion pounds
of strawberries each year at a rate of about six
thousand pounds per acre. By the early twenty teens, strawberries
(32:03):
had become the third most important fruit crop for the
US economy, following grapes and oranges.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
And all because of Duchane and fresier.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Do you have some listener mail for us?
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah, I surely do. This is from our listener Katie,
who writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I really enjoyed your
recent episode on the children's morality code. My kid's elementary
school has used a program called Character Strong for the
last several years. I saw some of the lessons when
school was over zoom. I definitely saw some echoes of
(32:39):
this old morality code in them. There was one that
was about determination, if I remember correctly, That featured a
video celebrating a disabled girl running along race even though
she was unable to walk. Afterwards, being reminded of the
program made me curious, so I checked out their website.
It doesn't have many particulars about the program, but it
(33:00):
does have this in the description quote explicit direct skill
instruction designed to lead to three powerful outcomes. Be strong,
be kind, be well. Yikes, I've sent you all pictures
of our pets before, so I thought i'd mix it
up and send a recent quilting project. I'm still a novice,
but I've made a lot of progress and an Abert's
(33:21):
squirrel eating fallen bird seed. Thanks for all the work
you do and throwing in some lighter episodes during all
of this. You may be a novice, but this quilting
is beautiful. It's a really beautiful kind of green and
cream with accents of peach and pink florals on it.
It's absolutely gorgeous. And I always love a squirrel picture.
(33:44):
We have squirrel friends to visit our deck all the time.
I just put out food for them too. We keep
everybody fat and happy on our deck. But Katie, thanks
for this. Terrifying to know that we're still doing that garbage.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, I mean, like we said in the behind the scenes,
I totally get teaching kids about things like honesty.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yes, and like strength of character great. Yeah, but the
idea of like you have to push beyond your physical
limits to a point that seems dangerous, where you are
unable to function. That's not strength, that's that's dangerous.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
The idea of associating morals with being.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Well, right, you'll be less disabled if you're stronger is
messed up. Uh huh, super messed up. I hope somebody
is reviewing that and realizing how woefully bad it is. Listen,
teach kids to be kind, take care of themselves and
(34:49):
one another. So good you don't you don't have to
do any of the other moralizing about what it is
to be a stronger. I hate all that. Yes, it
gives me the ick.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Really, I'm reminded of the person who sent us a
letter whose two family rules were don't hit and hold
hands in the parking lot, which they had as an
adult sort of re envisioned as be kind to one
another and look out for each other.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
That's very funny. You are reminding me of many moons ago.
I used to manage a hair salon and one of
our clients had two boys and they did the thing.
I've heard of other families doing this, but this mom
made these two boys do this in public ones and
(35:42):
it tickled me. And I don't know if anyone would
think it was terribly cruel, but they were fighting real bad, okay,
in public, and so she had a giant shirt that
she made them wear together.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I think I've heard of this, the giant shirt story.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
She's not the only one. She stuck out to me
because of some prominence in terms of being connected to
a professional athlete. But you know, what was one of
those things where it just I understand the logic of it.
I'm not a parent. I don't know what works for
any given family, but the logic, right is, of course,
(36:21):
if you have to be in that close proximity, you
cannot be physically fighting or you will just both fall down. Yeah. Yeah,
there's a whole restraint discussion to be had there, but
I get it. Listen, the rules of how people teach
kids are constantly changing. Yeah. In any case, Yeah, just
(36:43):
be kind to one another, be kind of look out
for each other. If you would like to write to
us to tell us whether or not you had to
share a shirt with a sibling when you fought, or
anything else, you can do that at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the podcast
Easiest Pie on the iHeart Radio app, or anywhere you
listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Tracy, have you noticed that strawberries are kind of having
a moment.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm gonna be honest, I haven't, just because I'm not
aware of anything happening fashionably.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Do you know what it is? It's also just that
you're not a rabid consumer the way I am. Okay,
Holly buys a lot of things she doesn't mean, but
strawberries are. They're having a moment. If you look at
clothing or home design goods that are out this year,
strawberries are everywhere. I literally got an email promotion for
like plush strawberry pillows. Oh my goodness. It's like, all right,
(00:54):
humans have been enjoying strawberries around the world for thousands
of years, but as a cultivated plant, they're actually pretty new.
The story of how they went from a small forage
item to one of the world's most popular fruits. There
is a technicality in there regarding that designation that we're
going to talk about in just a moment, but that
story involves a lot of crossbreeding experimentation as you would expect,
(01:18):
but what I love about it is there's also a
bit of spycraft. I didn't mean to pick another French thing.
I really just wanted to learn more about strawberries because
they were in my face everywhere. But that's what we're
talking about today.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Strawberries are actually part of the rose family, from the
family rose a cia. If that seems surprising, the rose
family is really quite massive. It contains four subfamilies, more
than ninety genus categories, and roughly twenty five hundred species.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
A rose is.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
In the genus Rosa. We think of it as a flower,
but rose are also a fruit. The Roseesia family also
contains almonds, pears, and apples, lots of other fruits as well. Strawberries,
which are rich and vitamin see, are in the genus Frigaria.
So the seeds of the strawberry, if you've ever seen one,
(02:17):
are of course on the outside, and that makes it
unique in the fruit world. But it's actually not really
a fruit or a berry at all. A strawberry, the
thing we eat and what we think of as the strawberry,
is actually the end of the plant's stamen, right it's
the receptacle that receives pollen. So if you look at
(02:38):
a strawberry flour, there's a nodule at the center, and
that is the receptacle, and it's that nodule that eventually
grows into the fleshy thing we eat, provided it's been pollinated.
And the strawberry is sometimes called an accessory fruit because
of this, and each of those seeds on the outside
is the actual fruit, known as a chienes, although we
(02:59):
wouldn't think of them fruit because they're not delicious. I mean,
there might be someone that thinks strawberry seeds are delicious,
but I've never met one. And an average strawberry has
as many as two hundred of these not really seeds
on its skin, and those can be used to grow
new plants, but the more common way for new plants
to form is actually through runners. So a healthy plant
(03:22):
will send out shoots called stolens, and those who will
root when they touch the ground, and then a new
plant will grow there. Strawberries have not been cultivated in
the sense that we know them now for really all
that long, only about two hundred and fifty years, but
of course they've been around for a lot longer than that.
If you've ever seen strawberries growing in the wild, or
(03:45):
even if you've grown some from seed, those were probably
a lot smaller than the ones you might buy at
a grocery store. And that's what strawberries are like without
human intervention in breeding and cultivation. But even before humans
knew how to grow big, juicy strawberries, they really loved them.
Horticultural biologist James F. Hancock notes in his book on Strawberries, quote,
(04:10):
the ease with which strawberries can be collected from the
wild may actually have delayed their cultivation until almost modern times.
Naturally occurring strawberries have been enjoyed in recorded history since
at least ancient Rome, and probably longer, but that's the
first time we have a record of them. It's estimated
(04:30):
that people started domesticating strawberries, growing them on purpose but
not messing with their genetics, about two thousand years ago,
and that seems like a long time, but if you
compare that to the domestication of grain, which started roughly
ten thousand years ago, it's obviously not that long. And
even so, these were in all likelihoods just clippings or
(04:51):
transplants of the small, previously forged strawberries that we mentioned
a moment ago, and again not the fat, juicy ones.
Larger versions seen in markets today are the ones that
we mentioned as being cultivated in the last two hundred
and fifty years, and we'll get to how those came
about in just a bit. Avid mentioned strawberries in his writings,
(05:13):
and so did Virgil, but these mentions were not about
them as food, more about them as ornamentals and identifiers.
For example, in Avid's Metamorphoses, strawberries come up twice, once
in a line where he just mentions the gathering of
mountain strawberries, and another where character of Polypemus says to
(05:33):
his estranged lover quote, with thine own hands, thou shalt
thyself gather the soft strawberries growing beneath the woodland shade.
Pliny the Elder mentions the strawberry in Natural History as
a plant native to Italy, but he also seems to
confuse it with another plant with a similar name. In
(05:54):
the same book, and in Virgil's work Eclogues, written in
the first cent BCE, he notes the boys that gather
flowers and strawberries low hid within the grass a serpent lies.
It's a warning about snakes more than it's about the strawberry.
The scant other mentions of strawberries and writing before the
(06:15):
fourteenth century tended to be about the appearance of the
berries or the flowers rather than their edible potential.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And even once people did start eating them or consuming
them in other ways, strawberries were just as likely to
be consumed for health reasons as for having any kind
of sweet fruit, and all parts of the plant have
been used in various treatments. So there are mentions of
strawberries being used to treat diarrhea, gout, indigestion, skin irritations, sunburn, pimples,
(06:47):
and yellow teeth in various medical texts throughout history, and
these uses have some solid scientific basis, although those early
users of strawberries as medicine wouldn't have had the data
we have today. To Turk heard to you right now,
we know that strawberries are, as we mentioned earlier, loaded
with vitamin C and also full like acid, antioxidants and potassium,
(07:09):
as well as just being full of fiber.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Where the name strawberry comes from is a matter of speculation,
and the theory is very quite a lot One idea
is that because they grow on the ground, they may
have often been seen growing in straw. Another is that
the berries might have been threaded on straw to be
easy to carry and sell, or maybe that they were
(07:33):
stored on beds of straw for transport to markets. Another,
and one that maybe makes the most sense, is that
they were first called strawberries because of the way that
they grew strewn about the ground, or maybe because they
ripened at the same time as hay did, and then
that eventually the name shifted to a different vowel in
(07:55):
the first syllable. I have seen the speculation that maybe
those little seed like bits on the outside looked like
straw dust to people, and that was maybe the source
of it. But anyway, the first known use of the
word strawberry comes from a pictorial vocabulary of the latter
fifteenth century. In the fourteenth century, strawberries had become popular
(08:20):
enough in France that the transition was made from foraging
them to gardening them. This was a strawberry species that
had been found in the woods fragaria vesca, which people
started to purposely grow near their homes for easy access,
Although they still were often sought out for their visual
appeal and not necessarily for eating. There are also many
(08:43):
instances of strawberries appearing in religious art in Europe in
its early years of cultivation. Strawberries appear in imagery throughout
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, often symbolizing righteousness. In thirteen
sixty eight, strawberries were included in the gardens of the
At this time it was still the main palace of
(09:03):
the King of France, who is Charles the Fifth, and
at the King's request, royal gardener Jean Dudoit incorporated twelve
hundred strawberries into the garden's design. I bet that was
so pretty, yeap. By the fourteen hundred, strawberries were being
sold by street vendors in London, and by the fifteen hundreds,
(09:23):
another species Fugaria muscata, also known as the musk strawberry,
had made its way into gardens as well. Strawberries were
grown in other European countries in addition to England and France.
Shakespeare's Richard the Third includes a mention of strawberries by
the Duke of Gloucester, who described seeing them in the
(09:43):
garden of the Bishop of Ely and asks that the
Bishop sent him some. By the time Shakespeare wrote that
play in fifteen ninety seven, strawberries had been extremely popular
in England for decades. King Henry the eighth was a
big fan. They were described does a medicinal remedy in
the fifteen twenty sixth book The Great herbal and were
(10:05):
discussed at length in a fifteen thirty sixth book, The
Natcheri Usturpium Libri, which was written by a botanist named Druelius.
The strawberry had also been classified as a plant that
was appropriate for women to cultivate in the fifteen fifty
seven book Five hundred Points of Good Husbandry. By that
(10:26):
point there was a clear division in writings between strawberries
that were purposely grown versus strawberries that were naturally occurring,
and France had continued to embrace the strawberry into the
sixteenth century. Henry the fourth of France's personal physician wrote
about them in the fifteen sixties. Their cultivation was described
(10:47):
in detail in the fifteen seventy eight writing Le Criculture
re Maison rustique, written by Jean le Beau and Charles Etienne,
and in this book that duo recommended that fields should
be planted with rawberries every third year as a way
to keep them fertile. Across the Atlantic, North America had
its own native strawberry, the Fragaria virginiana or Virginia strawberry.
(11:13):
Sometime in the seventeenth century, the Virginia strawberry made its
way to Europe. How that happened exactly is a little unclear,
but as Europe already loved strawberries, this new variety was
embraced and it started to be actively cultivated and crossed
with others, creating more than two dozen new species, but
(11:34):
these were still in terms of the fruit on the
small side.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
In seventeen fourteen, something happened that changed the strawberry forever.
The short version is that a native Chilean species known
as Fragaria chiloensis made its way to Europe. But the
story is much more interesting than that, and we're going
to talk about it after we pause for a sponsor break.
(12:06):
Fragaria chili insis is naturally a bit larger than the
strawberries that Europeans and North Americans were accustomed to in
the early eighteenth century. It was more than likely cultivated
by the mapuch and Huilich people for centuries before Europeans
ever knew about it. When conquistador Francisco Pizarro's forces conquered
(12:26):
Chile in the mid sixteenth century, they took some of
these strawberries with them to Cuzco, Peru. There the fruit
was written about by Garcelazzo de la Vega. His description
was of a heart shaped fruit that had seeds on
the outside. Although it's clear that's talking about a strawberry.
He called it by a name that we associate with
(12:47):
something very different. He called it the Chile. Other Europeans
who traveled to Chile also made note of this fruit,
comparing it to its European counterparts, but all was mentioning it,
mentioning that it had better flavor and was larger, some
comparing them to the size of large nuts. These Chilean
strawberries are described as being different colors in different people's accounts,
(13:11):
ranging from red to white, with basically every gradation in between.
But for some reason, no one writing these descriptions ever
thought to bring one back to Europe.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
These accounts, and particularly won by French priest Louis Foyer,
got the attention of France's King Louis the fourteenth. He
wanted to know more about this delicious berry, so he
found an engineer who could be sent to the Americas
to assess the forces of the Spanish colonies there. Louis
(13:43):
the fourteenths grandson, the Duke of Anjous, had become King
Philip the Fifth of Spain following the War of Spanish Succession,
so this spy work was more about making sure things
were good and that Louis the Fourteenth's financial and political
backing of Philip the Fifth were worthwhile, as well as
ensuring that France understood the situation completely in case everything
(14:06):
went sideways on the global stage. So even though Spain
and France were allies at this time, this was still
a secret mission. But the selected spy was also tasked
with collecting information and samples of the plant life of
South America. Depending on the source you read, was possibly
(14:26):
also keeping an eye out for the amazing strawberry that
Fuia and others had written about. Yes, there's not a
clear line of evidence that says that that it was
a straw was like, go get me some strawberries, but
it does seem like he was very intrigued by them,
(14:47):
and this person certainly does get some That spy that
we're talking about was a thirty two year old lieutenant
colonel named Amade Flansois Flesier. Flesier was born in sixteen
two in Chamberry, Savoy, which is in the eastern part
of France. It's about three hundred kilometers from the Swiss border. Initially,
(15:08):
the path that Amade Francois was expected to follow in
terms of education was one that was going to lead
him to the legal profession, which is what his father did.
But Fresier was not interested in the law. He was
interested in science, and he managed to convince his father
that he should go to Paris to study that instead
of law. In his studies, he focused on navigation and astronomy,
(15:32):
and he wrote his thesis on the relationship.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Between the two. And when he had completed his education
in Paris, he then spent time in Italy, where he
also indulged his interest in architecture and art and studied
those disciplines during his time there, but he didn't immediately
translate his education into a strictly scientific vocation. In seventeen hundred,
(15:55):
at the age of eighteen, Fresier joined the military, enlisting
with the Army of France, but he still did keep
his scientific work going, really for no other reason than
to occupy himself. He had a lot of free time
in the infantry. He wrote a paper on pyrotechnics, including
instructions on the manufacture of fireworks. But this did actually
(16:17):
advance his military career, as did mention the possible uses
of fireworks by the military. So this landed him a
position as a military engineer. That position was part of
the intelligence branch, and that's how he came to be
the man for the job that Louis the fourteenth had
in mind. His varied knowledge of navigation, explosives, and science
(16:40):
led to him being selected by his commanding officers as
the man they recommended. He sailed out on January seventh,
seventeen twelve, when Frasier boarded the ship the Saint Joseph
headed for South America. He knew that he would be
undercover as he completed this mission. He arrived in Concepts,
Chile on June sixteenth, and he couldn't exactly hide, so
(17:04):
instead he created an alternate backstory for himself and posed
as a merchant trader. This persona made it possible for
him to travel openly and to visit places under the
guise of mere curiosity instead of performing reconnaissance. For two
and a half years he toured Peru and Chile, feigning
(17:24):
to be a merchant and a tourist, all the while
documenting the fortifications of the Spanish military. He made detailed
maps of the Spanish colonial forts, with detailed accounts of
their artillery and their weak points where an attack might
be mounted, as well as their potential roots of escape,
and accompanying those maps and accounts, he included information about
(17:46):
the surrounding areas, such as the indigenous populations, the municipal governments,
religious practices of the locals, etc.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
These were cultivated strawberries in soil that Frazier described as
quote extraordinarily fertile. He wrote of the location, quote there
they plant whole fields with a sort of strawberry rushes
differing from ours, and that the leaves are rounder, thicker,
and more downy. The fruit is generally as big as
(18:15):
a walnut, and sometimes as a hen's egg, of a
whitish red, and somewhat less delicious of taste than our
wood strawberries. Besides these, there is plenty in the woods
of our European kind. Frasier also noted in the description
that he had collected some of these plants for the
King's garden. He also included a life size drawing of
(18:38):
the strawberries. He described this drawing showed them full of fruit,
but not showing the plant's flowers. When Frasier returned to
France on August seventeenth, seventeen fourteen, he carried with him
five of the strawberry plants which he had cared for
on the voyage back across the Atlantic. This was no
small feet. Listen, if you've ever transported plants, you know
(19:02):
there are dangers, and in addition to all of the
jostling that a plant might meet at sea, water was
rationed on this trip, so prioritizing the plant's need for
it had required careful calculation in some assistance from a
crew member who will mention in just a moment. Fresier
was honored by Louis the fourteenth for this work, with
(19:24):
a cash reward for the many maps he returned with
and of course those strawberries. Amedi Fresier wrote a book
about his travels titled Account of the Voyage from the
South Sea to the coasts of Chile, Peru, and Brazil,
made during the years seventeen twelve, seventeen thirteen, and seventeen fourteen.
(19:45):
Louis the fourteenth did not live long enough to see
this published. He died on September first, seventeen fifteen, which
was the year before it was finished, so he really
didn't get to see the full results of the spy
mission or the fruit that came from it. A lot
of people got to read about it, though, because Frasier's book,
which corrected a number of map errors made by his
(20:06):
predecessor Lui Flier, and caused an ongoing feud between those
two men that was translated into English, Dutch, and German.
Monica Barnes, writing for the American Museum of Natural History
in two thousand and eight, noted of this popular text quote,
most of the information in Frasier's text is superficial, obviously biased,
(20:29):
and available from other sources. However, during the second and
third decades of the eighteenth century, there was little information
on western South America available to readers outside the Spanish
speaking world. To a certain extent, Frasier filled that gap.
The great strength of his work lies not in its narrative,
(20:49):
but in its many excellent illustrations.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
The illustrations are very good. So of those five plants
that we mentioned that he brought back, only one of
them actually went to the king, or more specifically, to
the King's gardener in Paris, Antoine de Jusieux. Remember, strawberries
readily reproduce and spread through runners, so that one plant
led to many, and in addition to the King's plant,
(21:14):
Fresier kept one for himself, he gave one to his boss,
Monsieur Pelletier, and he gave two to a Monsieur Rux,
who had been in charge of cargo on the voyage
to France and who had been very key to making
sure the plants got water. But though all of these
plants produced new plants through runners, what they weren't producing
(21:36):
was fruit, because, as it turned out, the Chilean strawberry
was a species that has male plants and female plants,
as many strawberries are, and you need both of those
to achieve pollination and produce fruit.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
It's long been presumed that Fresier, and wanting to bring
the best plants back to France, naturally selected ones that
bore large fruit that meant they were all female. Although
Jesu had shared the runners of the King's plant with
other gardeners both in France and abroad, they just couldn't
get them to produce any fruit, except occasionally very small, misshapen,
(22:14):
and incomplete ones. There were a lot of studies made
of the plants, with details about their large flowers and
stout leaves, and all of this was recorded and analyzed,
but there was just no fruit. One Dutch botanist called
it the Chili strawberry without blooms or fruits in his notes.
They were taken to gardeners in England who tried to
(22:36):
solve the puzzle. Some experimenters got really good at producing large,
healthy blooms, but that was all the success they could
really achieve. By the seventeen forties, a lot of gardeners
had grown tired of trying to get something out of
the Chilean plants, and in England they had fallen out
of favor.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
But the strawberry was not abandoned by every hopeful horticulturist.
We'll talk about the breakthrough that offered some hope for
the almost mythical berries that Fresier had touted. After we
paused for a sponsor break. In France, some gardeners were
(23:21):
managing to produce fruit from Fresier's plants, although not very many.
There are notes of a Monsieur Denuete Greux, who reported
that he had managed to get some very large berries,
some with a circumference of seven point five inches, by
crossing the Chilean plant with quote pollens from native berries.
(23:41):
Fifty years after Fresier's plants arrived in Europe, someone produced
large fruit from a Chilean strawberry and presented a bowl
of that fruit to King Louis the fifteenth on July sixth,
seventeen sixty four. That person was a teenager. He was
just seventeen, and his name was Antoine Kolas Dushane, and
he got his strawberries by crossing the Chilean strawberries with
(24:05):
musk strawberries. Dushane, who was in line to inherit the
job of superintendent of the King's buildings from his father,
had learned a great deal about botany from the younger
brother of the King's Paris gardener. That brother's name was
Bernard de Jasieux, and Dushane was building on the work
of other gardeners and botanists, and because of this gift
(24:27):
to the King, he was given funding from the King
to continue this work, and he used that funding to
produce what would become a foundational text on strawberry cultivation.
He also, at the King's request, collected specimens of all
the known species of strawberry to be part of the
gardens at Versailles.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
His revelation regarding the sex of the plants had come
on May twenty ninth, seventeen sixty four, when he had
a Fragaria chiluensis sent to him from the Versailles garden.
It had already bloomed and no berries were growing on it,
and he was able to see that these flowers were
female without any male Chilean plants. He placed it near
(25:09):
a male musk strawberry, which he had noticed had some
similarities to the Chilean import and by June sixth, just
a week later, one of the receptacles had started to swell.
It had been pollinated. This was the experiment that led
to the berries that he presented to the King. Figuring
out the key to consistent strawberries and their fertility did
(25:32):
not happen instantly, though. Those beautiful berries that the seventeen
year old Dushane brought to Versailles had not been able
to reproduce. They didn't produce viable seeds.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Dushane dedicated himself to learning basically everything known about the
strawberry and all of its varieties, as he also experimented
with different iterations of cross pollination. He also consulted with
well known scientists, including Linnaeus as he worked through his experiments,
both for advice and kind of as a sort of
(26:06):
peer review of his observations. But even Linnaeus was unconvinced
of this idea of separate male and female plants, and
he thought that perhaps Dushane had been observing strawberries that
were frostbitten or damaged in some other way. When Duchane
wrote his book about his work, he noted, quote no
one I believe suspected before me the separations of the
(26:29):
sexes in the capiton. And through working with his own
experiments and the information he collected from other horticulturists, he
was able to figure out that the greatest success in
cross pollination happened when the female Chilean strawberries were combined
with male Virginia strawberries. Large fruit was the consistent result,
(26:51):
and that resulting fruit bore seeds, and those seeds produced
plants that could self pollinate. He had created a new
species of strawberry, which he called Fragaria ananasa. So ananasa
is a reference to pineapples, because these resulting berries smelled
to dushane like pineapple, and the Fragaria ananasa is the
(27:13):
strawberry that we eat today.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
The success of the combination of the two North American
strawberry species has led to the theory that these two
species were possibly originally from the same species, likely one
that originated in Asia, and that these two lines developed
in the separate climates of Chile and then farther north
in North America. If that's the case, the two plant
(27:39):
species went on a huge journey before being finally brought
back together in France. So if you speak French, you
may have been thinking throughout all of this that because
of this extended spy mission, the word fres which means strawberry,
was applied to the beloved fruit as an honor to
the man who brought the Chilean samples back to the
(28:00):
French king. But in a hilarious twist, that is actually
the opposite of what happened. Fresier's family already had an
association with the strawberry going quite away's back, and the
name Fresier had been gifted to them by a previous
king of France. So this story goes all the way
back to the tenth century, when one of amide Frasier's ancestors,
(28:24):
Julius du Bery, which is hilarious that he was already
called Berry, served King Charles the Third strawberries at the
end of a banquet as a gift. Not only was
the king delighted, but his Italian guest, Cardinal Clemens of
Monte Alto, was bowled over and described these berries as
superior to any that could be found in Italy. So
(28:46):
in thanks for making France look very good with a
foreign official, Charles the Third knighted Julius de Berry and
bestowed the name fres Strawberry upon him, as well as
giving the family coat of arms strawberry blossoms, and then
over time Frez shifted to Fresier. So in terms of lore,
(29:08):
it almost seems like Ami Day was destined to be
Louis the fourteenth Strawberry Guy. As for Fresier's life, host
strawberry retrieval. It was a full one. He went back
across the Atlantic in seventeen nineteen, this time as chief
engineer at Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic. He returned
to Europe and oversaw the building of a reported twenty
(29:31):
six defense structures. He got married and had a family,
and he continued working, rising higher in his career until
he finally retired at the age of eighty two. But
he continued to write and read a great deal and
died in seventeen seventy three at the age of ninety one,
having been celebrated for a wide variety of achievements. Yeah,
(29:53):
he's one of those people that was pretty recognized as
like an icon and a sage. It is t time
he got to enjoy the benefit of his reputation while
he was still alive. Antoine Nicola Dushane continued to experiment
with strawberries and other plants and published a lot of
books about his work. He was able, for example, to
(30:16):
identify the optimal temperatures at which strawberries would produce, and
eventually also developed a master diagram of the theoretical genealogical tree,
which included all of the known types of strawberries and
how he believed they developed from a single origin point.
When the French Revolution of seventeen eighty nine erupted, Duchane
(30:37):
lost his post, and because he was so connected to
the royal family, he was in real danger of being guillotined.
He did manage to ride out the conflict with his life, though,
and he turned to teaching once things had settled down.
But after that his life became sort of a series
of bad money management, sorrow at the loss of his
(30:58):
wife and daughter, ventually rapidly declining health. He died in
eighteen twenty seven after a series of strokes, just shy
of his eightieth Birthdayshane saw in his lifetime the benefit
of his work in strawberry breeding. Before he died, many
many gardeners throughout Europe were implementing the information he had
(31:20):
developed to produce big, juicy, self fertile strawberry crops. Dishes
featuring strawberries became luxury items, with strawberries and cream being
especially popular. Doushane's legacy is still part of every supermarket
strawberry we eat. The USDA estimates that ninety four percent
(31:41):
of all US households consumed strawberries in some form each year,
with each person eating an estimated four point eighty five
pounds on average annually. The US produces three billion pounds
of strawberries each year at a rate of about six
thousand pounds per acre. By the early twenty teens, strawberries
(32:03):
had become the third most important fruit crop for the
US economy, following grapes and oranges.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
And all because of Duchane and fresier.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Do you have some listener mail for us?
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah, I surely do. This is from our listener Katie,
who writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I really enjoyed your
recent episode on the children's morality code. My kid's elementary
school has used a program called Character Strong for the
last several years. I saw some of the lessons when
school was over zoom. I definitely saw some echoes of
(32:39):
this old morality code in them. There was one that
was about determination, if I remember correctly, That featured a
video celebrating a disabled girl running along race even though
she was unable to walk. Afterwards, being reminded of the
program made me curious, so I checked out their website.
It doesn't have many particulars about the program, but it
(33:00):
does have this in the description quote explicit direct skill
instruction designed to lead to three powerful outcomes. Be strong,
be kind, be well. Yikes, I've sent you all pictures
of our pets before, so I thought i'd mix it
up and send a recent quilting project. I'm still a novice,
but I've made a lot of progress and an Abert's
(33:21):
squirrel eating fallen bird seed. Thanks for all the work
you do and throwing in some lighter episodes during all
of this. You may be a novice, but this quilting
is beautiful. It's a really beautiful kind of green and
cream with accents of peach and pink florals on it.
It's absolutely gorgeous. And I always love a squirrel picture.
(33:44):
We have squirrel friends to visit our deck all the time.
I just put out food for them too. We keep
everybody fat and happy on our deck. But Katie, thanks
for this. Terrifying to know that we're still doing that garbage.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, I mean, like we said in the behind the scenes,
I totally get teaching kids about things like honesty.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yes, and like strength of character great. Yeah, but the
idea of like you have to push beyond your physical
limits to a point that seems dangerous, where you are
unable to function. That's not strength, that's that's dangerous.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
The idea of associating morals with being.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Well, right, you'll be less disabled if you're stronger is
messed up. Uh huh, super messed up. I hope somebody
is reviewing that and realizing how woefully bad it is. Listen,
teach kids to be kind, take care of themselves and
(34:49):
one another. So good you don't you don't have to
do any of the other moralizing about what it is
to be a stronger. I hate all that. Yes, it
gives me the ick.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Really, I'm reminded of the person who sent us a
letter whose two family rules were don't hit and hold
hands in the parking lot, which they had as an
adult sort of re envisioned as be kind to one
another and look out for each other.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
That's very funny. You are reminding me of many moons ago.
I used to manage a hair salon and one of
our clients had two boys and they did the thing.
I've heard of other families doing this, but this mom
made these two boys do this in public ones and
(35:42):
it tickled me. And I don't know if anyone would
think it was terribly cruel, but they were fighting real bad, okay,
in public, and so she had a giant shirt that
she made them wear together.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I think I've heard of this, the giant shirt story.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
She's not the only one. She stuck out to me
because of some prominence in terms of being connected to
a professional athlete. But you know, what was one of
those things where it just I understand the logic of it.
I'm not a parent. I don't know what works for
any given family, but the logic, right is, of course,
(36:21):
if you have to be in that close proximity, you
cannot be physically fighting or you will just both fall down. Yeah. Yeah,
there's a whole restraint discussion to be had there, but
I get it. Listen, the rules of how people teach
kids are constantly changing. Yeah. In any case, Yeah, just
(36:43):
be kind to one another, be kind of look out
for each other. If you would like to write to
us to tell us whether or not you had to
share a shirt with a sibling when you fought, or
anything else, you can do that at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the podcast
Easiest Pie on the iHeart Radio app, or anywhere you
listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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