70 Fun Facts About Strawberry

Botanically speaking, which of these is a strawberry?

The red flesh grows from the flower's receptacle, not the ovary, which is why botanists refuse to call it a berry while bananas and tomatoes qualify.

The tiny 'seeds' dotting the outside of a strawberry are actually what?

Every strawberry is carrying dozens of complete fruits on its skin; the part you eat is technically the packaging.

Strawberries belong to which group of plants?

Apples, pears, cherries, raspberries and almonds are all cousins in the same family, Rosaceae.

The modern garden strawberry was first bred in the 1750s in which region?

It came from crossing a Virginia strawberry from North America with a Chilean one, so the world's favourite berry is an accidental French hybrid of two American parents.

What was the day job of Amédée-François Frézier, who brought the Chilean strawberry to Europe in 1714?

Frézier was sent to survey Spanish fortifications on the Chilean coast, and came home with five strawberry plants as well as his intelligence.

The Chilean strawberry plants first grown in France grew vigorously but bore no fruit. Why?

Gardeners in Brittany fixed it by planting wild woodland strawberries among them for pollen, and the plants suddenly fruited heavily.

The scientific name of the garden strawberry, Fragaria × ananassa, refers to which other fruit?

Eighteenth-century growers called it the 'pine strawberry' because of its flavour, and the Latin name kept the comparison.

Which country produced the most strawberries in 2024, at roughly 38 percent of the world total?

World production topped ten million tonnes, with the United States a distant second.

Raw strawberries are roughly what percentage water?

That leaves 8 percent carbohydrate and almost no fat, at about 33 calories per 100 grams.

A 100-gram serving of strawberries provides about 65 percent of the daily value of which nutrient?

That is more per gram than an orange offers; manganese is the only other nutrient present in a significant amount.

Which pigment gives strawberries their red colour?

It is an anthocyanin, the same family of pigments that colours red cabbage and blueberries.

Since strawberry allergy is linked to a protein tied to red pigment, which cultivars may suit allergy sufferers?

White strawberries ripen fully but never colour up, and a near allergen-free cultivar called 'Sofar' exists.

Strawberries and cream is the signature snack of which sporting event?

In 2019 the tournament served 191,930 portions of it.

Strawberries and cream is said to date to a visit Henry VIII paid to which of his officials?

Wolsey's cook at Hampton Court is rumoured to have served wild strawberries and cream, and because the king ate it, everyone else wanted it too.

The Beatles' 'Strawberry Fields Forever' was named after what kind of place in Liverpool?

John Lennon played in its garden as a boy; the red gates on Beaconsfield Road became a fan pilgrimage site and were once stolen.

'Strawberry Fields Forever' was released in 1967 as a double A-side with which other Beatles song?

The pairing peaked at number 2 at home, ending the band's four-year run of chart-topping singles.

The Strawberry Fields memorial to John Lennon in Central Park has a mosaic bearing which single word?

The mosaic sits near West 72nd Street, close to the Dakota building where Lennon lived and was killed.

The children's character Strawberry Shortcake began life in the 1970s as what?

Artist Barbi Sargent's 'Girl with a Daisy' card was so popular that American Greetings asked for a strawberry-themed outfit.

What was special about the hair of the original 1979 Strawberry Shortcake dolls?

Every character's doll smelled like its own fruit or dessert, and Strawberry Shortcake's cat was named Custard.

Which toy company released the first Strawberry Shortcake doll in 1979?

The first version was a rag doll with red yarn curls, freckles and a strawberry-print bonnet.

What is the name of Strawberry Shortcake's arch-enemy in the classic cartoons?

He returned alongside Sour Grapes in the 2006 film and again in the 2018 YouTube series.

Which town in Florida calls itself the winter strawberry capital of the world?

Its Florida Strawberry Festival, first held in 1930, runs 11 days and draws about half a million people.

The Florida Strawberry Festival was conceived in 1930 by which local group?

It ran annually until World War II halted it from 1941 to 1947, then the American Legion helped revive it.

Which Louisiana town's Strawberry Festival ranks second only to Mardi Gras in the state?

The first festival in April 1972 had just 11 booths and opened with a college baseball game.

Driscoll's, the world's largest berry company, is headquartered in which town near Monterey Bay?

The company breeds proprietary varieties and licenses them only to approved growers, and it invented the hinged plastic clamshell in the 1990s.

Which state grew 86 percent of America's fresh strawberries and 98 percent of its frozen ones in 2017?

Monterey, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties alone accounted for close to 80 percent of the state's crop.

The 'Strawberry Moon' is the full moon of which month in the Farmers' Almanac tradition?

The name spread through the Farmers' Almanac tradition of month-by-month full moon names.

What was Deana Carter's 1996 debut single, a number one about a first love on a grandparents' farm?

Songwriter Matraca Berg based it on her own teenage summers near Luck, Wisconsin.

Who produced the Brothers Johnson's 1977 hit cover of 'Strawberry Letter 23'?

The 12-inch single was pressed on red, strawberry-scented vinyl, and Shuggie Otis wrote the original in 1971.

The 1960s band Strawberry Alarm Clock is best remembered for which psychedelic hit?

The lead vocal was sung by a 16-year-old friend of the band who was not even a member.

Wild Strawberries' Swedish title, Smultronstället, idiomatically means what?

The film won the Golden Bear at Berlin and gave Victor Sjöström his final screen role.

The 1941 film The Strawberry Blonde starred Olivia de Havilland opposite which actor?

Rita Hayworth played the title character; the film was a remake of 1933's One Sunday Afternoon.

The 1970 film The Strawberry Statement dramatised protests at which university?

It was loosely based on James Kunen's account of the 1968 occupation, though the film moved the action to a fictional San Francisco campus.

Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill House is the prototype of which architectural style?

Walpole wanted 'gloomth' inside to suit his collection of antiquities, and 'Strawberry Hill Gothic' became a style in its own right.

Madrid's coat of arms, also on Atlético Madrid's badge, shows a bear reaching up into what?

The strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo, is not related to real strawberries at all; it is the national tree of Italy.

The strawberry tree Arbutus unedo is the national tree of which country, matching its flag's colours?

Green leaves, white flowers and red berries make a living tricolour; the plant also grows wild around Killarney in Ireland.

The strawberry poison frog is nicknamed after which item of clothing, thanks to its most common colour morph?

Its red body and blue legs give the look; the species has roughly 15 to 30 colour morphs and mothers feed their tadpoles unfertilised eggs.

The Fraise Tagada, a pink sugar-dusted strawberry candy invented in 1969, is made by which company?

It is one of France's best-selling sweets, and its colouring comes partly from carmine and curcumin.

Eton mess is traditionally served at Eton's annual cricket match against which school?

Harrow occasionally serves it too, renamed Harrow mess; the earliest print mention is from 1893.

Which pastry chef created the modern French fraisier cake in 1966?

He first called it the Bagatelle after gardens near Paris; the word fraisier simply means strawberry plant.

Ichigo daifuku, a strawberry wrapped in sweet bean paste and mochi, was invented in Japan in which decade?

So many shops claim to have invented it that its exact origin is disputed; it is a springtime treat because of the fruit.

Along with vanilla and chocolate, strawberry is one of the three stripes of which classic ice cream?

Despite the Italian name, the earliest recorded three-flavour recipe was published in Prussia in 1839.

The earliest recorded serving of strawberry ice cream, in 1744, was by which colony's governor?

Dolley Madison later served it at her husband's second inaugural banquet in 1813.

Little Scarlet, the wild-type strawberry Bond eats in From Russia, with Love, is farmed only in which country?

Wilkin & Sons of Tiptree brought the plant over from the United States in the 1900s and appears to be the world's only commercial grower.

A pineberry is a strawberry cultivar with what unusual appearance?

It tastes faintly of a tropical fruit, was first identified in South America around 2002 and is grown mostly in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Wépion, considered Belgium's strawberry capital, is a district of which city?

It has grown strawberries for more than 150 years and even brews a strawberry beer, La Wépionnaise.

In Mexican slang, calling someone a 'fresa' (strawberry) means they are what?

It is roughly the equivalent of 'preppy', and the stereotype includes speaking as if with a potato in the mouth.

In Taiwan, the 'strawberry generation' is a label for young people who supposedly do what?

The 2008 student protests answered the insult by calling themselves the Wild Strawberries Movement.

William Morris's 1883 pattern Strawberry Thief depicts which birds raiding his kitchen garden?

It was printed by a slow indigo-discharge process that made it one of Morris & Co.'s most expensive cottons, and it still sold well.

Giant strawberries appear among the nude figures in which famous triptych by Hieronymus Bosch?

One 16th-century writer read the fruit as a symbol of how quickly earthly pleasures spoil.

In Shakespeare's Othello, Desdemona's fateful handkerchief is embroidered with what?

Iago uses the 'spotted' handkerchief as false proof of infidelity, playing on an old image of a snake lurking under the strawberry.

Which Roman poet's Eclogues warned strawberry-pickers of a snake in the grass?

Medieval writers turned the snake beneath the strawberry into a symbol for any tempting but dangerous pleasure.

The wild woodland strawberry, Fragaria vesca, holds a possible European record for what?

It also carries about 47 seeds per fruit, likely the most of any European fleshy fruit.

Garden strawberries are octoploid. How many sets of chromosomes does that mean they carry?

Humans get by with two sets; the strawberry genome was finally sequenced in 2019.

Which R&B artist covered Coldplay's 'Strawberry Swing' on his 2011 mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra?

Coldplay themselves played the song at the 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony with the British Paraorchestra.

Which city did Strawberry Switchblade, the polka-dot duo behind 'Since Yesterday', come from?

Rose McDowall and Jill Bryson met in the city's late-1970s punk scene.

Strawberry Fair, a free festival held since 1974 on the first Saturday of June, takes place in which English city?

It is held on Midsummer Common and draws about 30,000 people; it skipped 2025 for financial reasons.

Which wild species did Breton gardeners plant among fruitless Chilean strawberries to supply pollen?

Once the woodland strawberry provided pollen, the all-female Chilean plants bore abundant fruit.

Who showed in 1766, at Versailles, that the garden strawberry was a hybrid of two American species?

Philip Miller had already recorded the 'pine strawberry' in Chelsea in 1759.

Which 1806 cultivar from Isleworth, England, won the Royal Horticultural Society's Silver Cup?

Michael Keens picked it out from many hybrids; later RHS Award of Garden Merit winners include Honeoye and Pegasus.

Which species did the modern garden hybrid replace in commercial production?

Fragaria moschata had been the cultivated favourite before the hybrid arrived.

How much of the world's strawberry crop was produced in 2024?

China grew 38% of it, with the United States the second-largest producer.

What is the name of the virtually allergen-free strawberry cultivar?

It lacks Fra a1, the protein tied to red pigment that is thought to trigger strawberry allergy.

Which two volatile compounds are especially prized by US breeders for a 'sweet and fruity' aroma?

Only 31 of some 360 volatile compounds correlate significantly with desirable strawberry flavour.

In which year was the garden strawberry's genome sequence published?

Its wild relative F. vesca, a genetic model plant, was sequenced earlier, in 2010.

What does the Latin epithet 'vesca', as in the wild wood strawberry, literally mean?

In context it probably carries the sense of 'edible', from vescor, 'to eat'.

How many chromosomes does the diploid wild wood strawberry have in total?

All Fragaria species have a base count of seven, and the garden strawberry carries eight sets.

Rügen, the first modern alpine strawberry cultivar, originated at a castle on which German island?

Emil Spangenberg first offered the runnerless, everbearing variety in 1920 from Castle Putbus.

Which freelance artist first created Strawberry Shortcake for American Greetings in 1977?

Muriel Fahrion later drew further concept art and designed the first rag doll with her sister.

How much did Iconix Brand Group pay American Greetings for Strawberry Shortcake in 2015?

The franchise is now owned by the Canadian company WildBrain.