Strawberry Fields Forever

To me, strawberries smell of freedom.

I am sure you know that olfactory response, when a certain smell instantly brings you back to a specific moment in your life. Bath and Body Works’ Cucumber-Melon lotion will always remind me of seventh grade basketball trips. The smell of strawberries will always remind me of my sixteenth birthday.

On April 18th 1999, I turned sixteen. I drove alone for the first time—my brand new temporary paper drivers’ license tucked safely in my wallet. I drove and drove, in my parents’ white GMC Yukon, with all the windows down. I drove past fields and fields of strawberries, ripe and ready to be picked—their scent wafted into the car with the warmth of the spring air. I was sixteen and I could drive. I was free.

While the thrill of driving has worn off, the thrill of strawberry season has not.

Growing up on California’s central coast, strawberries always officially marked spring for me. We never bought strawberries from the grocery store—only ever straight from the fields on the side of the road. I remember riding in the front seat next to my mom with a huge flat of strawberries on my lap. The little Japanese ladies who ran the stand would tape a sheet of newspaper over the top of the box, and I would sit pulling out the berries that peeked out the side. I popped the whole things in my mouth, biting off their green tops, and then tossing them out the window. We would get home and for lunch I would just have a plate of strawberries. I think that for the entire month of April, I had a red tinge all around my mouth.

Strawberries are the fruit from the plants of the genus Fragaria. The Latin name ‘fraga’ refers to the fruits’ fragrance, and the English name ‘strawberry’ refers to the plants’ straying branches and leaves—a characteristic that it shares with many other members of the rose family.

Wild strawberries are indigenous to both the old and the new world. The small, wild variety that is native to Europe and Asia is known as an Alpine variety (Fragaria vesca), while the Virginia strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) is native to North America. The Pine or Beach strawberry (Fragaria chiloenis) is native to South America.

Almost all modern commercial strawberry varieties today are hybrids of the Virginia strawberry and the Pine (or Beach) strawberry. Both varieties were imported to France in the 1600’s where they cross-pollinated in Charles V’s gardens at the Louvre (he supposedly had over 5,000 strawberry plants in his gardens). This crossbreeding resulted in plants with larger, juicer, and more flavorful berries. Ever since this natural “accident,” cultivators derive most all strawberry varieties from these two species.

Farmers generally do not cultivate wild strawberry varieties for commercial purposes because these plants produce small fruits and low yields. However, if you have ever had the fortune of tasting a wild strawberry, you know that such an experience is like tasting a piece of heaven—an intense explosion of sweet, pure strawberry flavor on your tongue, absolutely nothing like the watery, spongy, pathetic excuses for strawberries that you find in your supermarket.

Strawberries can grow anywhere in the United States, and do indeed grow in all fifty states. However, eighty percent of commercial strawberries grow in California. Florida is the second largest producer, and Oregon follows as a distant third. Due to the modern marvels and advancements in plant breeding, transportation, and refrigeration, you can find strawberries from one of these commercial growing regions year round.



I remember the first time I saw strawberries in that clear plastic box, sitting in a supermarket refrigerator in the middle of February. What struck me first was that I could not smell them. No, not even if I picked up the box and shoved my nose into the little plastic vent slots. Nothing. They had no smell. I didn’t understand—strawberries are supposed to let off a fragrance that reminds you of the days getting longer and the sun shining brighter. Strawberries are supposed to ooze with sweet red juice that dribbles down your chin as you bite into their plump bodies. These impostors were red alright, but they were dry and scentless. These strawberries had no soul.

You see, as long-distance transport and refrigeration became more common, and as people began to buy their food from supermarkets as opposed to farmers or green-grocers, we began to loose touch with the seasons. Customers wanted those juicy passionate berries to go with their champagne on Valentines Day. And horticultural researchers saw dollar signs in the prospect.

Berry breeders at California’s universities worked for years, trying to figure out how to make these marvelous spring and summer gems available all year long. They soon found a way. They found many ways. Researchers developed varieties of strawberries that ship well and yield high quantities of fruit—essentially these researchers figured out how to grow money…on strawberry plants. But what we gain in year round access, we loose in flavor.

All strawberries are fragile and extremely perishable when perfectly ripe. This means that strawberry cultivators pick the berries before they reach full maturity, pack them, ship them, and then spray them with gas to further the ripening process once they have reached their destination. Not to mention, most industrial farms spray non-organic strawberries with extremely noxious agricultural chemicals—more than any other commercial crop, mainly due to their extremely fragile nature. And because of the backbreaking labor required to harvest the berries, California agricultural workers call strawberries, la fruta del diablo, “the fruit of the devil.”

Today strawberries seem to have lost their magic. Because you can now find them in any place, at any point of they year, most people take them for granted. They are just another fruit. The marvel of such a wonderful food resides not only in its taste or juiciness, but in the mere fact that they only naturally occur once a year—when the sun shines brighter and longer and the ground thaws. Going from a diet of preserved food, root vegetables, and bitter greens to taking a bite of your first spring strawberry is magical. I can’t help but sit in awe of nature as the red juice dribbles down my chin.

But more than anything, it’s the smell. Whenever I am lucky enough to get home and visit my family in the springtime, I take a drive. I drive past the strawberry fields, roll my windows down, and let the sweet scent fill my nostrils. I am sixteen again…and I am free.