General: Perennial herb from a fibrous root and short, thick rhizome, with short, leafless runners; stems trailing, rooting at the nodes; runners, leaf stalks and flower shoots silky-long-hairy and reddish.
Leaves: Basal in rosettes, palmately compound, on stalks 4-20 cm long; leaflets 3, egg-shaped, short-stalked, 1.5-4 cm long, thick, leathery, the lower surface strongly net-veined, pale and somewhat hairy, the upper surface green, smooth and wrinkled, the margins coarsely toothed with the terminal tooth shorter than its neighbours.
Flowers: Inflorescence an open cluster of 5 to 15 (20) stalked flowers atop axillary, leafless shoots 3-15 cm long, shorter than to slightly exceeding the leaves; corollas white, 2-4 cm across, the petals 5, egg-shaped to round, 8-16 mm long; calyces silky-hairy, 5-lobed, the lobes (sepals) lanceolate, 6-10 mm long, alternating with elliptic bractlets that are almost as long as the sepals; ovaries superior; stamens about 20.
Fruits: Strawberries, hemispheric, 1-1.5 cm in diameter, hairy, covered with achenes; achenes about 2 mm long, slightly immersed in the fleshy receptacle.
Notes: The garden strawberry, Fragaria x ananassa Duchesne (a complex group of hybrids involving F. chiloensis and F. virginiana) is sometimes found as a garden escape in SW BC. Plants intermediate to F. chiloensis or F. virginiana have been called F. crinita Rydb. Two sympatric subspecies occur in BC:
1. Hairs on stems and leaf-stalks appressed.............. ssp. lucida (Vilm.) Staudt
1. Hairs on stems and leaf-stalks spreading.................... ssp. pacifica Staudt
1. Leaves thin, not strongly veined beneath, not wrinkled above; plants generally distributed
2. Terminal tooth of leaflets usually surpassing the adjacent lateral ones; leaflets generally unstalked; fruiting shoots longer than the leaves................F. vesca
2. Terminal tooth of leaflets usually much narrower and shorter than adjacent lateral ones; leaflets short-stalked; fruiting shoots shorter than the leaves..............F. virginiana
Source: Illustrated Flora of British Columbia
Habitat / Range
Dry to mesic sand dunes and rocky coastal bluffs, just above high tide, in the lowland zone; frequent in coastal BC; N to AK and S to CA; disjunct to South America.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
