Fragaria × vescana

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Fragaria × vescana
Fragaria vescana.jpg
Plant Info
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Rosales
Family: Rosaceae
Subfamily: Rosoideae
Genus: Fragaria
Species: F. × vescana

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

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