Fraise – Fresa – Fragola – Erdbeere

I have little idea of the etymology of any of the words for strawberry in the title to this post, although I have long admired the pragmatic poetry of the German Erdbeere (literally, earth-berry) which has always sounded far more mammalian than vegetal to me. What I do know, however, is that the English word ‘strawberry’ has nothing to do with straw. The straw of the berry has instead to do with the straying, self-strewing behaviour of the plants along the ground. The referential wheel spins strangely in Corsica: the strawberry plants are tucked into beds of straw and called fraises.

Strawberries might be ruined for me. Firstly, I recently spent ten days doing little but care for strawberries on an organic farm in Corsica. I’ve weeded strawberries, I’ve scattered woodchips and straw over beds of strawberries to keep weeds away, I’ve aerated the roots of strawberries, I’ve pruned runners and dead leaves and under-achieving leaves and any unsightliness away from millions of strawberry plants and I’ve picked more kilos of strawberries than I care to count. I have implanted a visual guide to the strawberry in my brain and I expect fraise related imagery to punctuate my dreams for many decades hence. What it will mean for me to dream of strawberries in twenty years, I do not know. Nostalgia, perhaps, for my irresponsible tridecennial berry fling on the hills of Corsica where the plants are as tough as barbed wire?Or maybe strawberry dreams will draw to mind a place where the sun beats down like anything but honey on our ladies of the garden? Was it in one of Roald Dahl’s memoirs that the story was told about the boy who worked in a chocolate factory and got sick of the taste of chocolate? Was it my friend Skye’s grandfather? Was it family apocrypha? I’m not sure I will find myself sick of the taste of strawberries for a long, long time. What worries me is that I might never find strawberries to match those of le Jardin de Niolu, delicious, warmed by the sun, impeccables.I’m also worried that I might turn into one of those insufferable food types who points out all the flaws in the produce before them. ‘If your strawberry isn’t bright red and glossy right up to the stem, forget it, just forget it.’ Worse, I could become the tedious globe-trotting food nostalgists whose every bite is a pretext for a yarn. ‘Yes, these are nice strawberries that you are serving me, kind host, but not a patch on those wonderful, wonderful organic berries from Corsica, I ate them when I was young and the sun was warm… [Insert dull and self-focussed travel anecdote here].’

Mindful of these dangers, I register only the following. Recently, I have eaten the best strawberries that have ever come my way. They resemble only marginally the hard red pyramids which taste of wood and water often sold under the label ‘strawberry’ in Australia. This is an outrage.

Since leaving the rocky and mountainous terrain of Lozzi, I have been weeding the internet for useful information, a far less satisfying project than digging into the earth, albeit kinder to the knees, hands, and back. Had I been foraging through the internet and not hacking into Corsican soil, I might have come across this reference to the Strawberry Project earlier and tucked a few runners into my pocket; so equipped I would have strewn the strays all over Genoa and thus propagated the guerrilla gardening meme, one of my long-term (almost non-ironic) favourites.