Kingdom Plantae Family Rosaceae Genus Fragaria Scientific name Fragaria × vescana | Order Rosales Subfamily Rosoideae Species F. × vescana Rank Hybrid | |
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Similar Fragaria nilgerrensis, Fragaria nubicola, Fragaria iturupensis, Fragaria daltoniana, Fragaria iinumae | ||
Fragaria × vescana is a hybrid strawberry cultivar that was created in an effort to combine the best traits of the garden strawberry (Fragaria × 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 × 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 × 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. × vescana cultivars
The following decaploid strawberries were released by the Swedish breeding program at Balsgård:
German F. × vescana cultivars: