Barren Strawberry, Potentilla sterilis

The Barren Strawberry, Potentilla sterilis, is one of the first flowers of spring and can be in flower as early as February, especially in a mild winter like this one, though in cooler areas it will flower into May. The nearest plants are in my local cemetery, where it grows in the rougher grassy areas beneath trees. This is its usual habitat, though it will grow out in the open in upland areas. The plant can also be found on walls and in rock crevices.

Like Wild Strawberry (Fragaria vesca), which I wrote about last June, Barren Strawberry is a low-growing perennial and a member of the Rosaceae (the Rose family). Both plants have attractive white flowers.

Although the plants are superficially similar, there are a number of differences between Wild and Barren Strawberries.

Wild Strawberry flowers later in the year than Barren Strawberry (April to July, rather than February to May). Barren Strawberry has more widely spaced petals than Wild Strawberry and these are notched, and the sharply pointed green sepals extend at least as far as, or further than, the petal tips. Wild Strawberry has bright green, shiny leaves but those of Barren Strawberry are dull, grey-green with spreading hairs and smaller, with less prominent veins. Each Wild Strawberry leaflet tapers to a point but the terminal tooth on each Barren Strawberry leaflet is shorter than those on either side, giving it a more rounded appearance.

The ‘barren’ in Barren Strawberry and the plant’s specific name, sterilis, give a key difference from the Wild Strawberry: its fruits are not edible so there is no point in waiting for any red strawberries to form.

The fruit in both Barren and Wild Strawberries is an achene, a dry fruit which contains the seed. But in the Wild Strawberry the receptacle swells to produce an edible accessory fruit, the strawberry that we know and love. In Barren Strawberry the receptacle doesn’t swell and we are left with a small, dry and hard fruit, to the disappointment of foragers.

Potentilla sterilis is widely distributed in the British Isles. It is native here and throughout  much of the rest of Europe (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, , Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). It is also listed as “doubtfully present” in the North Caucasus and former Yugoslavia. Barren Strawberry has been introduced into Newfoundland in North America, where it is known as the Strawberryleaf Cinquefoil.

Clive Stace lists 16 species of Cinquefoils (Potentilla) in his “New Flora of the British Isles” (Fourth Edition 2019). Potentilla means “powerful, despite its small size” or “little powerful one” and is derived from the Latin word potens and French potence, which both mean “strong”, “powerful”, “mighty”, or “potent”. This is a reference to the claimed medicinal value of some plants in this genus.

British relatives of Barren Strawberry include Silverweed (Potentilla anserina; edible root and young leaves, astringent), Tormentil (Potentilla erecta;  astringent, folk medicine for diarrhoea) and Creeping Cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans; edible young leaves, antispasmodic and astringent). These three plants have yellow petals but others, such as Rock Cinquefoil, Potentilla rupestris, have white petals. The Shrubby Cinquefoil, formerly Potentilla fruticosa, widely grown as a garden shrub and found growing wild the British Isles in a Cumbria and Upper Teesdale in Northern England and in parts of Western Ireland, has been reclassified as Dasiphora fruticosa. The wild form has yellow petals but garden cultivars can also have white or orange flowers.

In grassland, Barren Strawberry becomes much more difficult to find once it has finished flowering, as the grass grows above the plant, making it more or less invisible. By late summer, the plant is but a distant memory, until spring arrives and the flowers open once more.