Strawberries

This passage describes how the strawberries that we eat everyday were created.

Lexile Level: 680L

Categories: History Animals & Nature

A lot of wild strawberries are small and tasteless. The yummy strawberry we eat today has a long history. In the 1500s, explorers took some strawberry plants from Virginia to France. They liked the plants because they had a bright red color. They produced nice, big berries. They also produced more fruit than the strawberry plants in France at that time. Two hundred years later, another strawberry plant arrived in France. The plant came from South America. A French spy found it while he was working in Chile. It also produced really big berries. The Chilean plant had trouble reproducing in France. The spy had brought all female plants! The plants needed pollen to produce fertile seeds. When the Chilean variety was planted next to the Virginian one, baby plants began to grow. The new variety grew big, red, tasty berries. It's the delicious variety you now get at the grocery store.