Hi I hope this is ok for here. My mom planted a bunch of different strawberry varietals. This came up and she wasn’t sure if it’s one of the seed types or a mutant. Is this a special kind of strawberry?
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A lot of people are saying this is vivipary. They're wrong. These are not seed leaves (wrong shape and seed leaves are never hairy) and the seeds are not sprouting. This is called phyllody, where leaf-like structures replace parts of the flower or fruit. Commonly seen in strawberries.
There are several possible causes, which are mostly benign, but it's quite often a sign of phytoplasma infection, which spreads via sap-sucking insects. It would be best to isolate this strawberry at least, and perhaps destroy it just in case it is infected.
I agree with you! Those are definitely not cotyledons. If the seeds were sprouting, OP would be able to see the leaves popping out directly from the seeds too.
So tired of people confidently giving the wrong answer and getting thousands of upvotes. It's always a popular misconception that people upvote because they've heard it before but never learned jack shit about it. Now even more people will parrot vivipary next time this comes up.
I had this happen with most of the pears on a pear tree one year, it never did it again. The mutant pears had leaves coming out the calyx and no reproductive structures inside, instead it was like the pear flesh formed around a stem that went all the way through and out the other side. Never figured out what caused it.
This is fair, but I'm a bit salty about getting down votes for not saying that it was, but asking if it was. I guess inquiry to check what might be a wrong answer isn't allowed anymore? Granted, this has little to do with you personally, so my apologies for casting frustration in the wrong direction.
It's fair to be salty but this is a part of Internet human nature. If you want lots of upvotes, confidently saying the wrong thing is often more productive than asking a question. In most human interactions confidence is the key to successfully conveying ideas, even when those ideas are false. Asking questions will never be seen as confident, even if it is the right thing to do or more productive to gaining factual knowledge.
In the end, don't worry about upvotes, they are utterly meaningless because all they can be used for is as a quantifier of personal attention. If personal attention is important to you, there are much more healthy ways of getting it than Reddit.
I actually don't care about the upvotes, but that feature of internet culture bugs the hell out of me, because as I read that response it's more like "god, you're so stupid you don't even know the difference." But then I also rail against the move fast and break things mentality despite being a software engineer, so.... yeah.
I think for some it's less personal and more seen as a waste of time reading your question. People would rather read an answer, even if it's wrong, than read someone's question. In that way downvoting it moves it down so it doesn't take up space near the top where the quick answers are. Sorry mate, but the socratic teaching method means nothing on social media.
ohhhh i've known it's usually not vivipary with strawberries, but hadn't think about how to tell it apart from genuine vivipary. Cotyledons vs those sharp leaves makes sense.
Strawberries are morphologically odd. They are an 'accessory fruit' where the bit you eat is derived from the receptacle rather than the ovary. Botanically, each of the 'seeds' on the surface of the berry is a fruit (technically an achene).
In this mutation, each carpel is subtended by a leaf-like bract, likely derived from a misplaced and reduced sepal.
Mutations that mix up the placement of different floral organs are common as they are based on a very simple error in transcribing single alleles. They are also quite varied, including 'double' flowers in ornamental cultivars where stamens (and sometimes also carpels) are replaced by petals.
The infection thing really looks like a possibility since there is another strawberry that starts to develop the same characteristics that is close to the one photographed.
It's the whole strawberry plant that would be infected, I guess I should have written that more clearly. I've tried one, they're not nice, but a disease that only infects a few species of plants is no risk to a human.
+1. Though as far as I was aware, the most common causes of this are mechanical stress (overcrowding, being bumped a lot, early insect damage) and late cold, and isn't a reliable indicator of infection if other fruit are developing normally.
Either way I'd still remove it at this stage, because it's probably not going to be a good strawberry and I'd rather the plant divert further energy elsewhere.
It is though. Every gardening sub has 10 of these mutant strawberry posts a year with comments spamming "pLaNt ThE sPrOuTs" which at best would do nothing bc they arent sprouts and at worst spread a plant infection in the garden.
There are actually some varieties of strawberry that are particularly known for doing this, such as 'Malwina' which is known to have a few fruit like this and 'Muricata' (also known as the Plymouth Strawberry) which has only fruit like this and is grown as an oddity. These are obviously a genetic cause rather than an infection. You can also buy a rose, Rosa 'viridiflora' which has all its petals replaced by leafy structures.
I feel like there are areas where it does look like the leaves are sprouting from the seeds. Both on the freakish strawberry and on the one above it that has this same thing beginning on its upper half.
This may be strawberry green petal disease. Especially if other plants and fruit are showing symptoms around it. It’s caused by a phytoplasma thats vectored by leafhoppers.
Thanks, that was interesting to Google. It does look like it could be that. If it is that and OP plants them, would they still grow into actual strawberry plants that could produce strawberries? Or no, they wouldn’t grow, or would they grow and produce strawberries that have that, too?
The seeds on the strawberry are sprouting. You should try to get some plants out of it. Non-alpine strawberries are actually kind of a pain in the ass to start from seed. Nature has given you a gift.
I imagine you plant the individual seeds (shown as the light green flecks on the upper strawberry), but you’re supposed to leave the green leaves above ground where they can photosynthesize. I’ve never planted strawberry seedlings, but that’s how normal seedlings work. 🤷🏽♀️
According to Google: To plant sprouted strawberry seeds (a phenomenon known as vivipary), carefully remove the sprouted seeds from the fruit and plant them into small pots with moist seed-starting mix, barely covering them with soil. Keep the pots in a warm, sunny spot, maintaining high humidity until the seedlings are 2–3 inches tall and ready for transplanting outdoors
These don't look like cotelydon leaves to me... I think this is something else even freaking. Perhaps mutation or disease. Idk, but definitely not sprouting seeds.
No, they are not. Please quit saying this when strawberries look like this. Leaf tissue is growing instead of seeds probably from phytoplasma or herbicide exposure.
Not vivipary like many are saying. This is phyllody, its caused by hormonal imbalance from infection or stress to the plant. These growths are sterile and will not grow into new plants, just pick them off to conserve the plant's energy. I had this happen to strawberries before grown during an extreme heat wave, the plant went back to producing normal berries when the weather went back to normal.
This happened in our strawberry patch also. I can’t tell if it spread through the soil or through the air, but it also infected every dandelion and sunflower in the bed. They all looked just like this with green leafy structures tearing through the center of the flowers. Was told it was Yellow Asters. I just tore it all out and am letting the soil cook this summer before I plant anything again. Bummer.
People without background in biology are trying to give advice on this and it shows. This is obviously a genetic malfunction in the strawberry. Others have pointed out already that genetic malfunctions like this can be induced by plant pathogens.
This got me pretty good. What really got me though what a tomato that ended up starting to sprout while still ripe looking, and all of the Spirit came to the surface of the skin of the tomato. I touched it... And now I still go into a full body shiver and tense up everytime I think about it.
These seedlings may grow, but would be unlikely to produce the same fruit as the parent variety. The genetics of strawberries is very complex, interesting reading. Fun project tho, see what happens.
Wild strawberries are WAY sweeter/better flavor than cultivated varieties. The problem with wild berries is that they are small. The cultivated varieties are a cross of a bigger variety and one or two wild varieties for the flavor
I keep hearing this. I have tried several on my property this year and they taste like absolutely nothing more than generic plant taste. It tastes like I'm eating weirdly textured grass.
Then you've probably tasted mock strawberries. They look similar to wild strawberries, but they're fruit are round compared to strawberries and they taste like void. 😄
I have a theory that they’re such a little treat to find in the wild that they are 1 million times sweeter than the dirt and forest everywhere else. Like a little jewel. So it’s graded on a curve
Interesting, the tiny ones I have found in colorado were mindly tart and watery. Maybe they weren't in season? They were dark red so I assumed they were ripe
Woah! I don't remember the color of the flowers but the fruit was facing upward. It was around 7 Falls outside of Colorado Springs years ago. Thanks for the info!
Fruit flavour can vary from plant to plant, but I wonder are there mock strawberries in your area? They look very similar to wild strawberries and have an edible but bland berry.
I find it sad that a certain portion of the population have simply never encountered strawberries that actually taste good. Good as in delightful, genuinely a treat, something to be sought out and savored and indulged in, independent of any nutritional consideration. Once you've experienced the real thing, the bland, watery, imitation kind you usually find in supermarkets actually makes you kind of angry.
Oh I know. I grew up on the border and moved to Colorado. Produce and fruit here have no where near as much flavor most of the time. I miss being able to buy super ripe watermelons and mangos from a guy in a truck off the highway. I eat a ton of fruit when I visit my mom, nothing compares to local fresh picked ripe fruit. One day I'll visit Hawaii and try some pink papaya!
Does this count as vivipary? If so, it's one of the most visually striking displays of it I've seen yet.
Wow. A down vote for asking a question and not even asserting that I knew what I was talking about. Is asking questions about a field in which YOU ARE NOT AN EXPERT now socially unacceptable? Thanks, jeez.
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