All about strawbwerry > Cultivation

Rosaceae family.

At the beginning of the 20th century, market gardeners were in the habit of spreading manure around their plants, though physicians of the time denounced the practice as a health risk. So to protect themselves, people developed the habit of soaking their strawberries in red wine for at least an hour, a very French way of curbing every ill. Though manure is no longer spread around the plants, this marriage of strawberries and red wine has not lost its popularity. Add a pinch of sugar and you have a sophisticated dessert.

The strawberry is a small plant, which forms clumps of varying bushiness. It is the flower's receptacle, which grows large and becomes red and fleshy. To botanists, it is the achenes, which constitute the fruit: the little raised yellow "seeds" on the outer surface which are covered by tiny, satiny hairs.