WEBVTT - Strawberries 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:14.960 of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye. 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:16.079 And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.840 Tracy, have you noticed that strawberries are kind of having 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:19.280 a moment. 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:23.680 I'm gonna be honest, I haven't, just because I'm not 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:27.560 aware of anything happening fashionably. 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:29.480 Do you know what it is? It's also just that 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:32.200 you're not a rabid consumer the way I am. Okay, 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:35.720 Holly buys a lot of things she doesn't mean, but 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:39.400 strawberries are. They're having a moment. If you look at 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:42.480 clothing or home design goods that are out this year, 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.640 strawberries are everywhere. I literally got an email promotion for 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:52.360 like plush strawberry pillows. Oh my goodness. It's like, all right, 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:57.400 humans have been enjoying strawberries around the world for thousands 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:01.040 of years, but as a cultivated plant, they're actually pretty new. 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:04.880 The story of how they went from a small forage 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:08.280 item to one of the world's most popular fruits. There 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:11.440 is a technicality in there regarding that designation that we're 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.080 going to talk about in just a moment, but that 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:18.800 story involves a lot of crossbreeding experimentation as you would expect, 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:20.640 but what I love about it is there's also a 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:25.280 bit of spycraft. I didn't mean to pick another French thing. 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:28.080 I really just wanted to learn more about strawberries because 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:31.520 they were in my face everywhere. But that's what we're 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:32.680 talking about today. 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:39.400 Strawberries are actually part of the rose family, from the 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:44.040 family rose a cia. If that seems surprising, the rose 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:48.960 family is really quite massive. It contains four subfamilies, more 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:53.640 than ninety genus categories, and roughly twenty five hundred species. 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:56.320 A rose is. 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:59.440 In the genus Rosa. We think of it as a flower, 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:03.880 but rose are also a fruit. The Roseesia family also 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:10.480 contains almonds, pears, and apples, lots of other fruits as well. Strawberries, 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:14.160 which are rich and vitamin see, are in the genus Frigaria. 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:17.880 So the seeds of the strawberry, if you've ever seen one, 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.280 are of course on the outside, and that makes it 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:24.959 unique in the fruit world. But it's actually not really 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.720 a fruit or a berry at all. A strawberry, the 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:31.320 thing we eat and what we think of as the strawberry, 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:34.480 is actually the end of the plant's stamen, right it's 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:38.000 the receptacle that receives pollen. So if you look at 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:41.120 a strawberry flour, there's a nodule at the center, and 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.840 that is the receptacle, and it's that nodule that eventually 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:49.320 grows into the fleshy thing we eat, provided it's been pollinated. 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:53.040 And the strawberry is sometimes called an accessory fruit because 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.960 of this, and each of those seeds on the outside 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:59.239 is the actual fruit, known as a chienes, although we 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.320 wouldn't think of them fruit because they're not delicious. I mean, 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.359 there might be someone that thinks strawberry seeds are delicious, 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:09.760 but I've never met one. And an average strawberry has 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:13.000 as many as two hundred of these not really seeds 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:15.920 on its skin, and those can be used to grow 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:19.040 new plants, but the more common way for new plants 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:22.680 to form is actually through runners. So a healthy plant 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:25.639 will send out shoots called stolens, and those who will 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:27.799 root when they touch the ground, and then a new 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:32.720 plant will grow there. Strawberries have not been cultivated in 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.360 the sense that we know them now for really all 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:38.400 that long, only about two hundred and fifty years, but 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:41.080 of course they've been around for a lot longer than that. 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.960 If you've ever seen strawberries growing in the wild, or 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.240 even if you've grown some from seed, those were probably 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:51.360 a lot smaller than the ones you might buy at 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:55.120 a grocery store. And that's what strawberries are like without 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:59.920 human intervention in breeding and cultivation. But even before humans 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:04.240 knew how to grow big, juicy strawberries, they really loved them. 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:09.760 Horticultural biologist James F. Hancock notes in his book on Strawberries, quote, 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:13.160 the ease with which strawberries can be collected from the 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:18.760 wild may actually have delayed their cultivation until almost modern times. 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:23.760 Naturally occurring strawberries have been enjoyed in recorded history since 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:27.240 at least ancient Rome, and probably longer, but that's the 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:30.640 first time we have a record of them. It's estimated 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:34.680 that people started domesticating strawberries, growing them on purpose but 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:38.520 not messing with their genetics, about two thousand years ago, 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:40.680 and that seems like a long time, but if you 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:44.680 compare that to the domestication of grain, which started roughly 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.440 ten thousand years ago, it's obviously not that long. And 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:51.640 even so, these were in all likelihoods just clippings or 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:55.960 transplants of the small, previously forged strawberries that we mentioned 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.159 a moment ago, and again not the fat, juicy ones. 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.800 Larger versions seen in markets today are the ones that 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.719 we mentioned as being cultivated in the last two hundred 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.240 and fifty years, and we'll get to how those came 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:13.479 about in just a bit. Avid mentioned strawberries in his writings, 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:16.520 and so did Virgil, but these mentions were not about 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:20.840 them as food, more about them as ornamentals and identifiers. 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:26.679 For example, in Avid's Metamorphoses, strawberries come up twice, once 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:29.640 in a line where he just mentions the gathering of 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:33.839 mountain strawberries, and another where character of Polypemus says to 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:38.839 his estranged lover quote, with thine own hands, thou shalt 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:43.479 thyself gather the soft strawberries growing beneath the woodland shade. 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:48.360 Pliny the Elder mentions the strawberry in Natural History as 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.400 a plant native to Italy, but he also seems to 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:54.359 confuse it with another plant with a similar name. In 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:59.279 the same book, and in Virgil's work Eclogues, written in 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:03.080 the first cent BCE, he notes the boys that gather 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:07.520 flowers and strawberries low hid within the grass a serpent lies. 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:11.480 It's a warning about snakes more than it's about the strawberry. 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:15.479 The scant other mentions of strawberries and writing before the 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.800 fourteenth century tended to be about the appearance of the 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:23.200 berries or the flowers rather than their edible potential. 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:27.240 And even once people did start eating them or consuming 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:30.479 them in other ways, strawberries were just as likely to 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:33.880 be consumed for health reasons as for having any kind 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:36.880 of sweet fruit, and all parts of the plant have 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:39.919 been used in various treatments. So there are mentions of 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:46.880 strawberries being used to treat diarrhea, gout, indigestion, skin irritations, sunburn, pimples, 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:51.719 and yellow teeth in various medical texts throughout history, and 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:55.799 these uses have some solid scientific basis, although those early 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:59.119 users of strawberries as medicine wouldn't have had the data 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:01.120 we have today. To Turk heard to you right now, 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:04.520 we know that strawberries are, as we mentioned earlier, loaded 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:09.280 with vitamin C and also full like acid, antioxidants and potassium, 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:11.480 as well as just being full of fiber. 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:16.480 Where the name strawberry comes from is a matter of speculation, 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:20.400 and the theory is very quite a lot One idea 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:22.920 is that because they grow on the ground, they may 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:27.920 have often been seen growing in straw. Another is that 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.000 the berries might have been threaded on straw to be 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:33.720 easy to carry and sell, or maybe that they were 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:38.480 stored on beds of straw for transport to markets. Another, 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:40.840 and one that maybe makes the most sense, is that 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:44.400 they were first called strawberries because of the way that 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:48.040 they grew strewn about the ground, or maybe because they 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:51.040 ripened at the same time as hay did, and then 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:55.200 that eventually the name shifted to a different vowel in 0:07:55.240 --> 0:08:00.000 the first syllable. I have seen the speculation that maybe 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:03.200 those little seed like bits on the outside looked like 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.760 straw dust to people, and that was maybe the source 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:11.080 of it. But anyway, the first known use of the 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:15.200 word strawberry comes from a pictorial vocabulary of the latter 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:20.600 fifteenth century. In the fourteenth century, strawberries had become popular 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:24.160 enough in France that the transition was made from foraging 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:28.160 them to gardening them. This was a strawberry species that 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.480 had been found in the woods fragaria vesca, which people 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:35.199 started to purposely grow near their homes for easy access, 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:38.640 Although they still were often sought out for their visual 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:42.920 appeal and not necessarily for eating. There are also many 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.640 instances of strawberries appearing in religious art in Europe in 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:51.079 its early years of cultivation. Strawberries appear in imagery throughout 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:56.720 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, often symbolizing righteousness. In thirteen 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.719 sixty eight, strawberries were included in the gardens of the 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:03.240 At this time it was still the main palace of 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:06.240 the King of France, who is Charles the Fifth, and 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:10.560 at the King's request, royal gardener Jean Dudoit incorporated twelve 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:14.960 hundred strawberries into the garden's design. I bet that was 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:19.920 so pretty, yeap. By the fourteen hundred, strawberries were being 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:23.760 sold by street vendors in London, and by the fifteen hundreds, 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:28.720 another species Fugaria muscata, also known as the musk strawberry, 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:32.920 had made its way into gardens as well. Strawberries were 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:37.160 grown in other European countries in addition to England and France. 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:41.320 Shakespeare's Richard the Third includes a mention of strawberries by 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:43.960 the Duke of Gloucester, who described seeing them in the 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.680 garden of the Bishop of Ely and asks that the 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:50.400 Bishop sent him some. By the time Shakespeare wrote that 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:54.760 play in fifteen ninety seven, strawberries had been extremely popular 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:58.040 in England for decades. King Henry the eighth was a 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.880 big fan. They were described does a medicinal remedy in 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:05.680 the fifteen twenty sixth book The Great herbal and were 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:09.080 discussed at length in a fifteen thirty sixth book, The 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.800 Natcheri Usturpium Libri, which was written by a botanist named Druelius. 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.440 The strawberry had also been classified as a plant that 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:21.280 was appropriate for women to cultivate in the fifteen fifty 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:25.920 seven book Five hundred Points of Good Husbandry. By that 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:29.600 point there was a clear division in writings between strawberries 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:34.360 that were purposely grown versus strawberries that were naturally occurring, 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:39.080 and France had continued to embrace the strawberry into the 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:43.760 sixteenth century. Henry the fourth of France's personal physician wrote 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:47.719 about them in the fifteen sixties. Their cultivation was described 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:51.439 in detail in the fifteen seventy eight writing Le Criculture 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:55.439 re Maison rustique, written by Jean le Beau and Charles Etienne, 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:59.160 and in this book that duo recommended that fields should 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:02.760 be planted with rawberries every third year as a way 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:07.520 to keep them fertile. Across the Atlantic, North America had 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:12.960 its own native strawberry, the Fragaria virginiana or Virginia strawberry. 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:17.240 Sometime in the seventeenth century, the Virginia strawberry made its 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:21.200 way to Europe. How that happened exactly is a little unclear, 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.400 but as Europe already loved strawberries, this new variety was 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:29.280 embraced and it started to be actively cultivated and crossed 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:34.320 with others, creating more than two dozen new species, but 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.440 these were still in terms of the fruit on the 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:38.240 small side. 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:43.680 In seventeen fourteen, something happened that changed the strawberry forever. 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:47.640 The short version is that a native Chilean species known 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:51.320 as Fragaria chiloensis made its way to Europe. But the 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:53.960 story is much more interesting than that, and we're going 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:56.760 to talk about it after we pause for a sponsor break. 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:10.000 Fragaria chili insis is naturally a bit larger than the 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:14.000 strawberries that Europeans and North Americans were accustomed to in 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:17.800 the early eighteenth century. It was more than likely cultivated 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:21.720 by the mapuch and Huilich people for centuries before Europeans 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:26.480 ever knew about it. When conquistador Francisco Pizarro's forces conquered 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:29.640 Chile in the mid sixteenth century, they took some of 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:33.720 these strawberries with them to Cuzco, Peru. There the fruit 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:37.880 was written about by Garcelazzo de la Vega. His description 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:40.400 was of a heart shaped fruit that had seeds on 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:44.679 the outside. Although it's clear that's talking about a strawberry. 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:47.400 He called it by a name that we associate with 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:52.080 something very different. He called it the Chile. Other Europeans 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.040 who traveled to Chile also made note of this fruit, 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:59.360 comparing it to its European counterparts, but all was mentioning it, 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:03.040 mentioning that it had better flavor and was larger, some 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:07.160 comparing them to the size of large nuts. These Chilean 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:11.400 strawberries are described as being different colors in different people's accounts, 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:15.640 ranging from red to white, with basically every gradation in between. 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:20.080 But for some reason, no one writing these descriptions ever 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:22.880 thought to bring one back to Europe. 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:27.120 These accounts, and particularly won by French priest Louis Foyer, 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:31.320 got the attention of France's King Louis the fourteenth. He 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:36.200 wanted to know more about this delicious berry, so he 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:39.040 found an engineer who could be sent to the Americas 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:43.520 to assess the forces of the Spanish colonies there. Louis 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:46.960 the fourteenths grandson, the Duke of Anjous, had become King 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:50.880 Philip the Fifth of Spain following the War of Spanish Succession, 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.840 so this spy work was more about making sure things 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:58.400 were good and that Louis the Fourteenth's financial and political 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:02.199 backing of Philip the Fifth were worthwhile, as well as 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:06.480 ensuring that France understood the situation completely in case everything 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:10.840 went sideways on the global stage. So even though Spain 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:13.840 and France were allies at this time, this was still 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:18.560 a secret mission. But the selected spy was also tasked 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:22.120 with collecting information and samples of the plant life of 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:26.280 South America. Depending on the source you read, was possibly 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:30.240 also keeping an eye out for the amazing strawberry that 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:35.120 Fuia and others had written about. Yes, there's not a 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:39.080 clear line of evidence that says that that it was 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:43.520 a straw was like, go get me some strawberries, but 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:46.400 it does seem like he was very intrigued by them, 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:52.240 and this person certainly does get some That spy that 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:54.840 we're talking about was a thirty two year old lieutenant 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:59.920 colonel named Amade Flansois Flesier. Flesier was born in sixteen 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:03.120 two in Chamberry, Savoy, which is in the eastern part 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:08.160 of France. It's about three hundred kilometers from the Swiss border. Initially, 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:11.400 the path that Amade Francois was expected to follow in 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:14.280 terms of education was one that was going to lead 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:17.400 him to the legal profession, which is what his father did. 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:21.200 But Fresier was not interested in the law. He was 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:24.400 interested in science, and he managed to convince his father 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:27.360 that he should go to Paris to study that instead 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:32.320 of law. In his studies, he focused on navigation and astronomy, 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:35.080 and he wrote his thesis on the relationship. 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.800 Between the two. And when he had completed his education 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:40.560 in Paris, he then spent time in Italy, where he 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:44.360 also indulged his interest in architecture and art and studied 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:49.080 those disciplines during his time there, but he didn't immediately 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:54.960 translate his education into a strictly scientific vocation. In seventeen hundred, 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:58.680 at the age of eighteen, Fresier joined the military, enlisting 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.320 with the Army of France, but he still did keep 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:04.960 his scientific work going, really for no other reason than 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:09.160 to occupy himself. He had a lot of free time 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:13.440 in the infantry. He wrote a paper on pyrotechnics, including 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:17.760 instructions on the manufacture of fireworks. But this did actually 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:21.960 advance his military career, as did mention the possible uses 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.320 of fireworks by the military. So this landed him a 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:30.240 position as a military engineer. That position was part of 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:32.760 the intelligence branch, and that's how he came to be 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:35.400 the man for the job that Louis the fourteenth had 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:40.520 in mind. His varied knowledge of navigation, explosives, and science 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:44.200 led to him being selected by his commanding officers as 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:48.320 the man they recommended. He sailed out on January seventh, 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:53.040 seventeen twelve, when Frasier boarded the ship the Saint Joseph 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:55.960 headed for South America. He knew that he would be 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:59.960 undercover as he completed this mission. He arrived in Concepts, 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:04.199 Chile on June sixteenth, and he couldn't exactly hide, so 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:08.879 instead he created an alternate backstory for himself and posed 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:12.679 as a merchant trader. This persona made it possible for 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:15.560 him to travel openly and to visit places under the 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:20.880 guise of mere curiosity instead of performing reconnaissance. For two 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.480 and a half years he toured Peru and Chile, feigning 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.119 to be a merchant and a tourist, all the while 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:32.080 documenting the fortifications of the Spanish military. He made detailed 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:35.639 maps of the Spanish colonial forts, with detailed accounts of 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:38.840 their artillery and their weak points where an attack might 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:42.800 be mounted, as well as their potential roots of escape, 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:46.480 and accompanying those maps and accounts, he included information about 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:51.440 the surrounding areas, such as the indigenous populations, the municipal governments, 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:53.880 religious practices of the locals, etc. 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:59.560 These were cultivated strawberries in soil that Frazier described as 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:04.720 quote extraordinarily fertile. He wrote of the location, quote there 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:08.320 they plant whole fields with a sort of strawberry rushes 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:12.200 differing from ours, and that the leaves are rounder, thicker, 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.879 and more downy. The fruit is generally as big as 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:19.199 a walnut, and sometimes as a hen's egg, of a 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:23.520 whitish red, and somewhat less delicious of taste than our 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:27.640 wood strawberries. Besides these, there is plenty in the woods 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:32.240 of our European kind. Frasier also noted in the description 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:34.840 that he had collected some of these plants for the 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:38.919 King's garden. He also included a life size drawing of 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:42.600 the strawberries. He described this drawing showed them full of fruit, 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:46.600 but not showing the plant's flowers. When Frasier returned to 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:50.680 France on August seventeenth, seventeen fourteen, he carried with him 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:54.000 five of the strawberry plants which he had cared for 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:58.320 on the voyage back across the Atlantic. This was no 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:02.399 small feet. Listen, if you've ever transported plants, you know 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.119 there are dangers, and in addition to all of the 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.960 jostling that a plant might meet at sea, water was 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:13.439 rationed on this trip, so prioritizing the plant's need for 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:17.720 it had required careful calculation in some assistance from a 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:21.400 crew member who will mention in just a moment. Fresier 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:24.199 was honored by Louis the fourteenth for this work, with 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:27.160 a cash reward for the many maps he returned with 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:32.760 and of course those strawberries. Amedi Fresier wrote a book 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:36.359 about his travels titled Account of the Voyage from the 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:39.480 South Sea to the coasts of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:43.880 made during the years seventeen twelve, seventeen thirteen, and seventeen fourteen. 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:47.560 Louis the fourteenth did not live long enough to see 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:51.440 this published. He died on September first, seventeen fifteen, which 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:53.760 was the year before it was finished, so he really 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:56.359 didn't get to see the full results of the spy 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:59.680 mission or the fruit that came from it. A lot 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:03.080 of people got to read about it, though, because Frasier's book, 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:06.600 which corrected a number of map errors made by his 0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:11.320 predecessor Lui Flier, and caused an ongoing feud between those 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:15.840 two men that was translated into English, Dutch, and German. 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:20.320 Monica Barnes, writing for the American Museum of Natural History 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:23.800 in two thousand and eight, noted of this popular text quote, 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:28.960 most of the information in Frasier's text is superficial, obviously biased, 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:32.840 and available from other sources. However, during the second and 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.280 third decades of the eighteenth century, there was little information 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:40.960 on western South America available to readers outside the Spanish 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:45.639 speaking world. To a certain extent, Frasier filled that gap. 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:49.680 The great strength of his work lies not in its narrative, 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:52.640 but in its many excellent illustrations. 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:57.280 The illustrations are very good. So of those five plants 0:20:57.320 --> 0:20:59.520 that we mentioned that he brought back, only one of 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:02.560 them actually went to the king, or more specifically, to 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:07.680 the King's gardener in Paris, Antoine de Jusieux. Remember, strawberries 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:11.320 readily reproduce and spread through runners, so that one plant 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:14.560 led to many, and in addition to the King's plant, 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:18.320 Fresier kept one for himself, he gave one to his boss, 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:22.040 Monsieur Pelletier, and he gave two to a Monsieur Rux, 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:24.640 who had been in charge of cargo on the voyage 0:21:24.680 --> 0:21:27.960 to France and who had been very key to making 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:31.640 sure the plants got water. But though all of these 0:21:31.680 --> 0:21:35.639 plants produced new plants through runners, what they weren't producing 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:39.639 was fruit, because, as it turned out, the Chilean strawberry 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.720 was a species that has male plants and female plants, 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:47.080 as many strawberries are, and you need both of those 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:49.439 to achieve pollination and produce fruit. 0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:54.040 It's long been presumed that Fresier, and wanting to bring 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:58.239 the best plants back to France, naturally selected ones that 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:03.080 bore large fruit that meant they were all female. Although 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:06.240 Jesu had shared the runners of the King's plant with 0:22:06.280 --> 0:22:10.320 other gardeners both in France and abroad, they just couldn't 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:14.600 get them to produce any fruit, except occasionally very small, misshapen, 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:18.320 and incomplete ones. There were a lot of studies made 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:21.960 of the plants, with details about their large flowers and 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:25.720 stout leaves, and all of this was recorded and analyzed, 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:29.600 but there was just no fruit. One Dutch botanist called 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:33.200 it the Chili strawberry without blooms or fruits in his notes. 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:36.760 They were taken to gardeners in England who tried to 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:41.520 solve the puzzle. Some experimenters got really good at producing large, 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:44.560 healthy blooms, but that was all the success they could 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:48.160 really achieve. By the seventeen forties, a lot of gardeners 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:50.840 had grown tired of trying to get something out of 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:54.080 the Chilean plants, and in England they had fallen out 0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:54.560 of favor. 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:59.840 But the strawberry was not abandoned by every hopeful horticulturist. 0:23:00.480 --> 0:23:03.199 We'll talk about the breakthrough that offered some hope for 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.960 the almost mythical berries that Fresier had touted. After we 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:20.840 paused for a sponsor break. In France, some gardeners were 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:25.720 managing to produce fruit from Fresier's plants, although not very many. 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:29.520 There are notes of a Monsieur Denuete Greux, who reported 0:23:29.520 --> 0:23:32.200 that he had managed to get some very large berries, 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:36.080 some with a circumference of seven point five inches, by 0:23:36.160 --> 0:23:40.639 crossing the Chilean plant with quote pollens from native berries. 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:45.920 Fifty years after Fresier's plants arrived in Europe, someone produced 0:23:46.000 --> 0:23:49.639 large fruit from a Chilean strawberry and presented a bowl 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:53.080 of that fruit to King Louis the fifteenth on July sixth, 0:23:53.119 --> 0:23:57.399 seventeen sixty four. That person was a teenager. He was 0:23:57.480 --> 0:24:01.399 just seventeen, and his name was Antoine Kolas Dushane, and 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:05.399 he got his strawberries by crossing the Chilean strawberries with 0:24:05.640 --> 0:24:09.960 musk strawberries. Dushane, who was in line to inherit the 0:24:10.040 --> 0:24:13.119 job of superintendent of the King's buildings from his father, 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:16.359 had learned a great deal about botany from the younger 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:19.720 brother of the King's Paris gardener. That brother's name was 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:23.160 Bernard de Jasieux, and Dushane was building on the work 0:24:23.200 --> 0:24:27.560 of other gardeners and botanists, and because of this gift 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:30.560 to the King, he was given funding from the King 0:24:30.640 --> 0:24:33.280 to continue this work, and he used that funding to 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:37.480 produce what would become a foundational text on strawberry cultivation. 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:42.200 He also, at the King's request, collected specimens of all 0:24:42.240 --> 0:24:44.960 the known species of strawberry to be part of the 0:24:44.960 --> 0:24:46.199 gardens at Versailles. 0:24:47.440 --> 0:24:51.320 His revelation regarding the sex of the plants had come 0:24:51.359 --> 0:24:54.840 on May twenty ninth, seventeen sixty four, when he had 0:24:54.880 --> 0:24:58.439 a Fragaria chiluensis sent to him from the Versailles garden. 0:24:59.320 --> 0:25:03.000 It had already bloomed and no berries were growing on it, 0:25:03.040 --> 0:25:05.360 and he was able to see that these flowers were 0:25:05.400 --> 0:25:09.600 female without any male Chilean plants. He placed it near 0:25:09.720 --> 0:25:13.280 a male musk strawberry, which he had noticed had some 0:25:13.400 --> 0:25:17.040 similarities to the Chilean import and by June sixth, just 0:25:17.080 --> 0:25:21.000 a week later, one of the receptacles had started to swell. 0:25:21.160 --> 0:25:24.680 It had been pollinated. This was the experiment that led 0:25:24.720 --> 0:25:28.680 to the berries that he presented to the King. Figuring 0:25:28.720 --> 0:25:32.800 out the key to consistent strawberries and their fertility did 0:25:32.800 --> 0:25:37.240 not happen instantly, though. Those beautiful berries that the seventeen 0:25:37.320 --> 0:25:40.760 year old Dushane brought to Versailles had not been able 0:25:40.800 --> 0:25:44.160 to reproduce. They didn't produce viable seeds. 0:25:45.280 --> 0:25:49.960