Strawberry, Alpine Strawberry Fragola Cascante

Alpine Strawberry, Fragola Cascante. If you don’t have room for strawberries in the ground, consider growing them in containers. This Alpine strawberry forms runners up to 5 feet long that are loaded with tiny, sweet berries. Pretty flowers cover the plants in spring, turning to red berries in warm weather. Fruits about 4 months from seeding. Makes a lovely hanging basket.

Although the Alpine strawberry flourished at Monticello, a sometimes-troublesome characteristic of this variety was the tiny size of the fruit. Jefferson stated bluntly, "it would take acres to yield a dish."

This European wildflower makes a compact, mounded plant with few, if any, runners, and produces fruit throughout the growing season. It has white flowers and small crimson berries that are very flavorful when fully ripe.

Thomas Jefferson first noted "Fragole Alpine" at Monticello on March 31, 1774. Having evidently acquired specimens of the plant in Europe, Jefferson included the Alpine strawberry in a list of baggage he had shipped from France in 1789. In a later letter to James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson included the Alpine strawberry as one of the "three objects which you should endeavor to enrich our country with.