Fragaria vesca ‘Muricata’

Plymouth Strawberry Rosaceae

One of the strangest strawberries ever to make it into cultivation — and with a pedigree involving John Tradescant the Elder. Fragaria vesca ‘Muricata’, the celebrated Plymouth Strawberry, is a remarkable natural mutation in which the normal floral structures become leafy and distorted. The flowers are effectively green, with the petals absent or transformed, while the resulting fruits develop into curious, greenish, cone-shaped structures covered in soft, spine-like projections. It is less a strawberry than a botanical prank — but an extremely historic one.

The story begins in Plymouth in 1627, when Tradescant encountered the plant in a woman’s garden. Her daughter had collected what she thought were ordinary wild strawberries, but when this strange plant produced its peculiar fruit she intended to throw it away. Tradescant, being incapable of allowing an interesting plant to meet the compost heap, rescued it, propagated it and distributed it among fellow enthusiasts. His account was recorded by Thomas Johnson in the 1633 edition of Gerard’s Herball. 

It subsequently became a fashionable botanical curiosity in European gardens and was described by John Parkinson in 1629 as the “Prickly Strawberry”. Antoine Nicolas Duchesne later studied it in detail and formally described it as Fragaria sylvestris var. muricata in 1766. The modern combination is Fragaria vesca f. vesca ‘Muricata’. Kew currently places the taxon within F. vesca subsp. vesca. 

The fruit is technically edible, but this is emphatically a plant grown for botanical history and curiosity rather than dessert. It makes a fascinating addition to a collection of historic or unusual fruiting plants.

Height: 10–15cm
Spread: 30–60cm
Flowering/Fruiting: May–July
Hardiness: H6 (-20 to -15°C)
Best conditions: Sun or partial shade; fertile, humus-rich, well-drained soil.

Rescued from a Plymouth compost heap by Tradescant in 1627 — quite possibly the most historically significant strawberry ever to produce a fruit that looks like it has been attacked by thorns.