93 Fun Facts About Strawberry

Botanically speaking, which of these is a strawberry?

An accessory fruit: the red flesh swells from the flower's receptacle rather than its ovary, so botanists do not count the strawberry as a berry at all.

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

Achenes, each holding a seed: every speck is a complete dry fruit in its own right, so the juicy red part is not the plant's true fruit but a swollen flower base carrying them.

Strawberries belong to which group of plants?

The rose family: Rosaceae also takes in apples, cherries and almonds, and the kinship shows in the strawberry's five-petalled blossom, which looks like a miniature wild rose.

Amédée-François Frézier, who brought the Chilean strawberry to Europe in 1714, had been sent to South America as what?

Spy: Frézier, a French army engineer, posed as a merchant to map Spanish fortifications on the Chilean coast, and sailed home in 1714 with five strawberry plants.

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

Pineapple: eighteenth-century growers called the hybrid the 'pine strawberry' for its flavour, and the epithet ananassa comes from ananas, the word for pineapple.

As of 2024, which country grows the most strawberries, more than a third of the world's crop?

China: it harvested more than a third of the world's strawberries in 2024, even though the garden strawberry is an 18th-century European hybrid of two American species.

Raw strawberries are about 91 percent moisture, matching which fruit?

Watermelon: both are about 91 percent water, which is why 100 grams of either holds only around 30 calories, while a banana, at 75 percent water, has nearly three times as many.

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

Vitamin C: 100 grams of strawberries hold about 59 milligrams, slightly more than an orange; manganese is the only other nutrient present in a significant amount.

Strawberries and blueberries get their colour from which pigment family?

Anthocyanins: these pigments can look red, purple or blue depending on acidity and also colour red cabbage; the strawberry's main one is pelargonidin-3-glucoside.

Which kind of strawberry cultivar may suit people with a strawberry allergy?

White-fruited ones: the suspected allergen, Fra a 1, is tied to the pathway that makes the red pigment, and a white mutant strawberry was found virtually free of it and tolerated by allergic people.

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

Wimbledon: fans eat tens of tonnes of strawberries there each summer, yet the pairing with cream is far older than lawn tennis, said to go back to feasts at Henry VIII's court.

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

Cardinal Wolsey: his cook at Hampton Court is rumoured to have served the king wild strawberries with cream, and once Henry had eaten the dish it caught on at court.

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

Strawberry Field was a Salvation Army children's home in Woolton; John Lennon played in its garden as a boy, and its red gates on Beaconsfield Road became a fan pilgrimage site.

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

Penny Lane: the February 1967 double A-side stalled at number 2 behind Engelbert Humperdinck's 'Release Me', 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 black-and-white mosaic reads 'Imagine', after Lennon's 1971 song; it sits near West 72nd Street, across from the Dakota where he lived and was shot in 1980.

Strawberry Shortcake began as a 1977 greeting-card drawing, as did which later toy line from the same card company?

Care Bears: American Greetings put them on cards in 1981, four years after Strawberry Shortcake, repeating its trick of turning a card character into a toy and cartoon franchise.

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

It was scented: every doll in the line had hair perfumed to match her name, so Strawberry Shortcake smelled of strawberries and friends such as Huckleberry Pie of their own treats.

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

Kenner, the Cincinnati company behind the first Star Wars action figures, licensed the character in 1979 and kept adding dolls until her popularity faded in the mid-1980s.

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

The Purple Pieman, voiced by Robert Ridgely, plagued Strawberryland in all six 1980s TV specials; Ridgely kept the role even when production moved to Canada and most of the cast changed.

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

Plant City, east of Tampa, is named not for its crops but for railroad builder Henry B. Plant, whose line put the farm town on the map; its strawberry festival dates from 1930.

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

The Plant City Lions Club launched the Florida Strawberry Festival in 1930 to celebrate the harvest; it was suspended during World War II and revived in 1948.

The town of Ponchatoula has honoured its strawberry farmers with a Strawberry Festival each April since 1972 in which state?

Louisiana: the Chamber of Commerce and Jaycees started Ponchatoula's festival with a $500 budget, and the first one in 1972 filled a single block with just 11 booths.

Which family-owned berry company breeds its own strawberry varieties and lets only approved growers plant them?

Driscoll's: the Watsonville firm also introduced the clear plastic clamshell in the 1990s, the hinged pack that changed how berries and other produce are sold.

Which state grows roughly nine in ten of America's strawberries?

California: it produces about 90 percent of the national crop, with Florida a distant second, although Florida grows most of the domestic winter crop.

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

June: Algonquian peoples of the north-eastern United States, and the Ojibwe, Dakota and Lakota, used the name to mark the weeks when wild strawberries ripened and were ready to gather.

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

'Strawberry Wine' drew on co-writer Matraca Berg's own teenage summers at her grandparents' Wisconsin dairy farm, and it won the CMA's Song of the Year award in 1997.

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

Quincy Jones produced it for the album Right on Time; the cover of Shuggie Otis's 1971 original reached the US top five, and its single came on red vinyl that smelled of strawberries.

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

'Incense and Peppermints' topped the Hot 100 in November 1967, yet its lead vocal came from Greg Munford, a 16-year-old friend from another band who happened to be at the session.

The Swedish title of Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries, Smultronstället, idiomatically means what?

A hidden gem of a place: literally 'the wild strawberry patch', the word is used for a little-known spot of personal, sentimental value, like the childhood strawberry patch the film's old professor recalls.

The 1941 comedy The Strawberry Blonde cast which gangster-film star as a dentist opposite Olivia de Havilland?

James Cagney played dentist Biff Grimes; the strawberry blonde herself was Rita Hayworth, cast only after Ann Sheridan refused the part during a contract dispute with the studio.

James Kunen's The Strawberry Statement, filmed in 1970, recounted 1968 protests at which university?

Columbia: Kunen's 1969 book described the April 1968 occupation of Columbia's buildings, though the 1970 film moved the story to a fictional San Francisco campus.

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

Gothic Revival: Walpole rebuilt the Twickenham villa from 1749 as a 'little Gothic castle' with battlements and pinnacles, wanting 'gloomth' inside, and Strawberry Hill Gothic became a style of its own.

Which city's coat of arms shows a bear reaching up into a strawberry tree?

Madrid: the bear came first, on the banners of the city's medieval militia; by tradition the tree was added after a 1222 settlement gave the town council the woods and the clergy the pastures.

The strawberry tree's green leaves, white flowers and red berries made it a national symbol of which country?

Italy: the corbezzolo's leaves, flowers and berries echo the tricolour, so patriots adopted it during unification in the 19th century, and the poet Giovanni Pascoli wrote an ode to it.

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

'Blue jeans': the common morph has a red body with blue legs; the species has 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?

Haribo launched the Fraise Tagada in 1969: a ball of aerated marshmallow rolled in pink strawberry-flavoured sugar, said to be named after a music-hall refrain, 'tagada tsoin-tsoin'.

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

Harrow: the pudding is linked to Eton's annual cricket match against the school; early versions mixed strawberries or bananas with cream or ice cream, and the meringue came later.

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

Gaston Lenôtre created it in 1966 and first called it the Bagatelle after the Paris gardens; the name fraisier simply means strawberry plant.

Ichigo daifuku, a Japanese sweet first sold in the 1980s, wraps a strawberry and bean paste in what?

Mochi: the soft rice cake hides a strawberry and sweet bean paste, and several confectioners each claim to have invented the 1980s treat, so nobody is sure who came first.

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

Neapolitan: 19th-century recipes moulded three or four flavours in a 'Neapolitan box'; chocolate, vanilla and strawberry won out, probably because they were America's favourite flavours.

Which First Lady reputedly served strawberry ice cream at her husband's 1813 inaugural banquet?

Dolley Madison: her name became closely linked with ice cream, yet she was not the first to serve it in the president's house; the Washingtons and Thomas Jefferson had both done so before her.

Which fictional character has Tiptree 'Little Scarlet' strawberry jam with his breakfast in a 1957 novel?

James Bond: in From Russia, with Love he breakfasts on Little Scarlet jam from Wilkin & Sons of Tiptree, made from a tiny American wild strawberry a Wilkin brought home in the 1900s.

A pineberry is a strawberry cultivar with what unusual appearance?

White flesh with red seeds: the pineberry is the garden strawberry's colours in reverse, and its small berries and low yields make it a pricey novelty, sold in Britain from 2010.

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

Wealthy and superficial: 'fresa' is roughly 'preppy', a stereotype of rich, affected youth said to talk as if they had a potato in the mouth.

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

Bruise easily under pressure: the 'strawberry generation' tag mocks young Taiwanese as soft, so student protesters in 2008 defiantly called themselves the Wild Strawberries Movement.

William Morris's 1883 pattern Strawberry Thief shows which speckled songbirds raiding his kitchen garden?

Thrushes: Morris based it on the birds that stole fruit from his kitchen garden at Kelmscott Manor; though one of his firm's most expensive printed cottons, it became a customer favourite.

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

The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted around 1500, is dotted with giant strawberries; Fray José de Sigüenza wrote in 1605 that they stood for fleeting earthly pleasures.

In which Shakespeare tragedy is a handkerchief 'spotted with strawberries' used as false proof of adultery?

Othello: Iago obtains Desdemona's strawberry-spotted handkerchief, Othello's first gift to her, and plants it in Cassio's lodging as supposed proof that she is unfaithful.

Which Roman poet warned boys picking strawberries that a cold snake was lurking in the grass?

Virgil: in his third Eclogue a herdsman tells boys gathering flowers and strawberries to flee because a cold snake lurks in the grass, the image behind the phrase 'snake in the grass'.

Which R&B singer reworked Coldplay's 'Strawberry Swing' to open his 2011 debut mixtape?

Frank Ocean opened Nostalgia, Ultra with his version of the 2008 Coldplay song; he released the mixtape himself on Tumblr with no promotion, and it launched his solo career.

Which Scottish city produced Strawberry Switchblade, the polka-dot duo behind 'Since Yesterday'?

Glasgow: the pair met in the city's punk scene, and their bright, bouncy top-five hit 'Since Yesterday' was, its writer revealed in 2015, really a song about nuclear war.

Strawberry Fair, a free festival held on Midsummer Common since 1974, takes place in which English university city?

Cambridge: volunteers run the whole fair, and traders' fees, fundraising and donations keep entry free for the 30,000 or more people it draws each year.

Strawberry plants spread by sending horizontal stems across the soil that root into new plants, called what?

Stolons, better known as runners, root at their nodes to make clones of the parent, which is how growers have multiplied strawberry plants for centuries, by pegging the runners down.

In 1766 a teenage botanist showed the garden strawberry was a hybrid of two American species while working at which palace?

Versailles: Antoine Nicolas Duchesne, born there in 1747, built a strawberry collection in the royal gardens and published his proof that the fruit was a Chilean and Virginian cross.

Which university's breeding programme released the strawberry cultivars Chandler, Camarosa and Albion?

The University of California's programme at Davis released Chandler in 1983, Camarosa in 1992 and Albion in 2006, varieties that came to dominate plantings in California and beyond.

Which species, known as the hautbois strawberry, was Europe's cultivated favourite before the garden hybrid?

The musk strawberry, Fragaria moschata, was the hautbois or 'capron' grown in European gardens from the 16th century, prized for its musky flavour before the garden hybrid took over.

Elsanta, for decades the supermarket strawberry of northern Europe, was bred in which country?

The Netherlands: Elsanta was bred at Wageningen from a Gorella × Holiday cross and released in 1981; its firmness and shelf life made it the standard supermarket berry.

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.

What is the kitchen term for pulling the green leafy cap out of a strawberry?

Hulling: the hull is the berry's calyx, the ring of green sepals left over from the flower, so hulling a strawberry means removing the last remains of its blossom.

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

2019: the octoploid garden strawberry's genome appeared in Nature Genetics that year, nine years after its diploid relative F. vesca, a model plant, was sequenced in 2010.

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

'Thin or feeble': vescus is Latin for slight or weak, though Linnaeus may have intended the related sense of 'edible', from vescor, 'to eat'.

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

14: Fragaria has a base count of seven chromosomes, so the diploid wood strawberry has two sets, 14 in all, while the octoploid garden strawberry has 56.

Strawberry Shortcake was sold in 2017 in a deal that also included a majority stake in which comic strip?

Peanuts: Canada's DHX Media, now WildBrain, paid $345 million for Iconix's entertainment arm, taking Strawberry Shortcake outright along with 80 percent of Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

Lotso, a teddy bear who smells of strawberries, rules Sunnyside Daycare in which Pixar film?

Toy Story 3 has Ned Beatty voice Lotso, who welcomes Andy's donated toys with a tour of a seemingly perfect playroom before the toddlers arrive.

Strawberries are not true berries in botany, but which of these fruits, like tomatoes and grapes, is one?

Banana counts as a berry because it is a fleshy fruit formed from one flower with a single ovary, a test that cucumbers and aubergines pass too.

An MI6 agent named Strawberry Fields is killed by drowning in crude oil in which Bond film?

Quantum of Solace staged her death as a homage to the gold-painted victim in Goldfinger, to show that oil had replaced gold as the most precious material.

Strawberry, raspberry, orange and lemon were the four original flavours of which dessert brand trademarked in 1897?

Jell-O was the work of a carpenter and cough syrup maker, Pearle Wait, whose wife May added the fruit flavours to powdered gelatin; he sold the brand two years later.

The strawberry squid of the deep twilight zone is best known for a mismatched pair of which body part?

Eyes of two sizes do two jobs for the squid: the large one picks out shapes against dim light, and the small one spots the glow of other animals.

A strawberry daiquiri blends the fruit with lime juice, sugar and which spirit?

Rum, citrus and sugar are the three pillars of every daiquiri, a drink that shares its name with a beach and an iron mine in the Caribbean.

A 'strawberry hemangioma', a raised red patch seen on babies, is a common type of what?

Birthmark is the everyday word for this harmless knot of blood vessels, which usually grows for about five months and then shrinks away over a few years.

Darryl Strawberry, the National League Rookie of the Year in 1983, began his major-league career with which team?

New York Mets management made him the first overall pick of the 1980 draft, and he hit 26 home runs in his first season in the majors.

Like the Dutch aardbei and Danish jordbær, the German word for strawberry, Erdbeere, literally means what?

Earth berry is the literal sense: Erde plus Beere, a compound the language has carried since its Old High German form.

Fresh strawberries, often on a layer cake, are the classic dessert of which Swedish holiday of maypole dancing?

Midsummer feasts in Sweden start with pickled herring and boiled new potatoes with dill, then end on strawberries with whipped cream.

One parent of the garden strawberry is a wild North American species named after which US state?

Virginia lends its name to Fragaria virginiana, yet the little wild strawberry grows across much of the United States and southern Canada.

'Strawberry Spring', a short story about a serial killer at a New England college, is by which author?

Stephen King first published it in 1968, heavily revised it for his collection Night Shift, and saw it become his first work officially adapted as a podcast.

Mahabaleshwar, a hill station famed for its strawberries, is in which nation?

India owes the crop to colonial rulers, who planted European fruit at hill stations like this one to recreate the landscapes of home.

The mock strawberry, a look-alike with red fruit, can be told from the real thing by flowers of which colour?

Yellow petals give the mock strawberry away; it is a Potentilla from Asia whose three-part leaves and fruit otherwise mimic a true strawberry.

A coronet ringed only with strawberry leaves, with no silver balls, marks which rank of the peerage?

Duke is the one rank whose coronet carries strawberry leaves alone: a marquess alternates them with silver balls, and a baron gets the balls with no leaves at all.

Besides scarlet fever, a red, bumpy 'strawberry tongue' is a classic sign of which illness of children under five?

Kawasaki disease inflames the blood vessels of young children, and the tell-tale tongue also turns up in toxic shock syndrome.

Strawberry and Chocolate, a 1993 tale of an unlikely friendship, was the first Oscar-nominated film from which country?

Cuba earned its first Academy Award nomination with this story of a gay artist and a young student, directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío.

Captain Queeg grows obsessed with a half-empty container of strawberries in which Pulitzer-winning naval novel?

The Caine Mutiny uses the strawberry hunt as proof of Queeg's paranoia, and his officers relieve him of command soon after, at the height of a typhoon.

Lois Lenski's Strawberry Girl, a 1945 novel set in rural Florida, won which children's book prize?

Newbery Medal judges honoured Lenski for a book she both wrote and illustrated, one of a series of novels about children in different American regions.

In which Shakespeare history play does the title character ask the Bishop of Ely for strawberries from his garden?

Richard III places the fruit in the bishop's Holborn garden, and the real gardens at Ely Place were said to grow the finest strawberries in London.

Three strawberry flowers, a play on the clan's name, appear on the coat of arms of which Scottish clan?

Fraser sounds like fraise, the French for strawberry, so the clan's arms carry three silver strawberry flowers that heralds call fraises.

Strawberry Studios in Stockport, named after 'Strawberry Fields Forever', was the home studio of which 1970s band?

10cc guitarist Eric Stewart co-owned the studio and named it for his favourite Beatles song, and the band made its first four albums there.

A 'strawberry roan' horse has pale hairs mixed evenly through a body coat of which base colour?

Chestnut is the reddish base that the scattered hairs soften to pink, while the lower legs, mane and tail keep their solid colour.

The fungus behind grey mould on strawberries also causes which condition that sweetens the grapes of Sauternes?

Noble rot shrivels grapes into the makings of prized dessert wines, but the same Botrytis fungus simply ruins strawberries, which have to be thrown away.

A London cab-horse named Strawberry is turned into a winged horse by Aslan in which Narnia book?

The Magician's Nephew gives the horse the new name Fledge along with his wings, and he flies Digory and Polly to a distant garden.

The flute sounds on the Beatles' 'Strawberry Fields Forever' come from which tape-replay keyboard?

Mellotron notes play back from tape; John Lennon bought one in 1965 and used it on his home demos, and its flute setting was run backwards for the song's ending.

Strawberries are optional collectibles in which 2018 platform game about climbing a mountain?

Celeste rewards the climb with a strawberry pie that Madeline shares with her friends, and its designer said the berries exist to make the game harder.

Strawberry Mansion, a historic summer home built in the 1780s by a judge, stands in a park in which US city?

Philadelphia bought the house in 1867 along with the land around it, a purchase meant to protect the river that supplied the city's drinking water.

The juicy red part of a strawberry that people eat grows from which part of the flower, not from its ovaries?

Receptacle tissue, the swollen base that the flower parts sit on, makes up the part we eat, which is why botanists do not count the strawberry as a berry.

A strawberry-picking party at Mr Knightley's Donwell Abbey is a set piece of which Jane Austen novel?

Emma has Mr Knightley invite the neighbourhood to gather fruit at Donwell, an estate the novel calls famous for its strawberry beds.