Happy Saturday everyone! I know
we are out of season now, but today’s blog is about this delicious berry.
The strawberry is another berry native to North America. Native
Americans called them "heart-seed berries" and would pound these red
treasures into their traditional cornmeal bread. In Europe, the strawberry was originally
grown more for decoration than for eating.
For example, Charles V had 1200 strawberry plants grown in the Louvre’s
royal gardens in Paris. It would
be another century before they were grown and refined for the market.
An interesting fact about the strawberry
is that this plant is a member of the rose family, and did you know that the
berry itself holds the actual fruits which are the little seed-like things
embedded all over its surface?! In terms
of this fruit’s name, there are many explanations, including the practice of
placing straw around the plants as they grew for protection, or the fact that
the runners spread outward from the plant and in Anglo-Saxon “spread”
translated to strew, which eventually became straw to the English.
In traditions of love, strawberries were used to show
flirtation, signifying an intoxication for someone or the fact that they were
delicious to you. In Art and Literature,
this fruit was a symbol of desire and sensuality, and began to be considered an
aphrodisiac, because of its high number of tiny seeds. Lastly, in Norse (Viking) mythology, the
goddess Frigga gave strawberries to symbolize spirits of young children that
had died as an infant and made their way to heaven inside a strawberry.
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