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Fragaria × vescana is a hybrid strawberry cultivar that was created in an effort to combine the best traits of the Garden Strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa), which has large berries and vigorous plants, with the Woodland Strawberry (Fragaria vesca), which has an exquisite flavour, but small berries.
This cross cannot take place naturally. Fragaria x ananassa has eight sets of chromosomes whereas Fragaria vesca has only two sets. Repeated attempts to cross these resulted in sterile offspring.
Researchers treated tissue from a Fragaria vesca plant with colchicine to create a mutant plant with four sets of chromosomes. This mutant was then crossed with a Fragaria x ananassa plant, and vigorous fertile offspring were obtained. The offspring were found to be decaploid, (having ten sets of chromosomes).
Fragaria × vescana is not yet commercially important, but remains under development. While the plants are vigorous like their F. × ananassa parents, and the berries have the excellent flavour of the F. vesca parents, the berries are still quite small.
F. x vescana cultivars
The following decaploid strawberries were released by the Swedish breeding program at Balsgård:
Annelie (1977)
Sara (1988) — Annelie x [(Sparkle x F. vesca 4x) open pollinated]
Rebecka (1998) — (Fern x F. vesca 4x) x F. x ananassa F861502
German F. x vescana cultivars:
Spadeka (1990?)
Florika (1990) — (Sparkle x F. vesca semperflorens) x Klettererdebeere H.
References
Bauer, A. 1993. Progress in breeding decaploid Fragaria × vescana. Acta Hort. (ISHS) 348: 60-64