The Alpine strawberry is at home when grown as a walkway edging, a ground cover, or as part of your fruit or herb garden. The plant is also as well-suited to growing in a container as it is in-ground and makes an excellent hanging plant or addition to your strawberry pot! Although it needs approximately four hours of sun per day, the plant likes to spend part of the day in a semi shady area.
The Alpine strawberry is a cousin of the wild strawberry and is the only strawberry plant that is regularly started from seed. Unlike other varieties, this day neutral cultivar doesn't put out runners. Instead, it reseeds profusely and bears fruit throughout the growing season.
Strawberries flowerering
Your nursery may grow two distinctly different types of the Alpine strawberry. As well as producing red berries, the Alpine strawberry is the only strawberry cultivar that produces white fruit. A less common variety bears a yellowish fruit. All three are notable for their fragrant white blossoms and small, very flavorful berries.
At maturity, the berries of the Alpine strawberry plant are white, yellowish or red, but all varieties start out white. Although the fruits are smaller than those of other strawberry varieties, their sweet flavor makes up for what they lack in size! In addition to bearing very flavorful fruit, the leaves of the plant are often used as a tea.
The berries, leaves, roots and stalks of the Alpine strawberry have historically all been used for one medicinal purpose or another, dating back to the time of Ancient Greece.
Leaves and roots were used to treat gout, the berry was eaten to alleviate digestive disorders, and the juice was used to whiten teeth, lighten freckles and age spots, and as a remedy for sunburn.
Most recently, antioxidant properties have been discovered in the fruit and the Alpine strawberry has been heralded as a possible preventative for many types of cancer.