Fragaria

Fragaria (/frəˈɡɛəri.ə/) is a genus of flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae, commonly known as strawberries for their edible fruits. There are more than 20 described species and many hybrids and cultivars. The most common strawberries grown commercially are cultivars of the garden strawberry, a hybrid known as Fragaria × ananassa. Strawberries have a taste that varies by cultivar, and ranges from quite sweet to rather tart. Strawberries are an important commercial fruit crop, widely grown in all temperate regions of the world.

Strawberries are not berries in the botanical sense. The fleshy and edible part of the "fruit" is a receptacle, and the parts that are sometimes mistakenly called "seeds" are achenes and therefore the true botanical fruits.

The genus name Fragaria derives from fragum ("strawberry") and -aria, a suffix used to create feminine nouns and plant names. The Latin name is thought in turn to derive from a Proto-Indo-European language root meaning "berry", either *dʰreh₂ǵ- or *sróh₂gs.

The semantic motivation behind the English name "strawberry" (from Old English strēawberie) is unclear. Various suggestions have been put forward. One is that the name derives from the old practice of gathering strawberries by stringing them on a straw or stalk. Alternatively, "straw" may refer to the long, thin runners found on members of the genus. The term is absent from the other Germanic languages, which instead use words meaning "earth berry".

There are more than 20 different Fragaria species worldwide. A number of other species have been proposed, some of which are now recognized as subspecies. One key to the classification of strawberry species is that they vary in the number of chromosomes. They all have seven basic types of chromosomes, but exhibit different polyploidy. Some species are diploid, having two sets of the seven chromosomes (14 chromosomes total), but others are tetraploid (four sets, 28 chromosomes total), hexaploid (six sets, 42 chromosomes total), octoploid (eight sets, 56 chromosomes total), or decaploid (ten sets, 70 chromosomes total).

As a rough rule (with exceptions), strawberry species with more chromosomes tend to be more robust and produce larger plants with larger berries.

The oldest fossils confidently classifiable as Fragaria are from the Miocene of Poland. Fossilised Fragaria achenes are also known from the Pliocene of China.

A number of species of butterflies and moths feed on strawberry plants.^{[citation needed]}