Strawberry Tree
"They set great store by their gardens. In them they have vineyards, all manner of fruit, herbs, & flowers, so pleasant, so well furnished & so finely kept, that I never saw thing more fruitful, nor better trimmed in any place."
-Utopia
by Sir Thomas More
(1478-1535)
by Sir Thomas More
(1478-1535)
The strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) is a small broadleaf evergreen tree or large shrub with a spreading round shape, typically with three or more trunks though it can be trained as a single-trunked upright tree of narrower habit. It is capable of growing twenty feet high, rarely thirty, & will be just about as wide as it is tall. But in Northwest gardens it tends to stay a good deal smaller, in the eight to twelve foot range, & slow reaching that.
A mature specimen has gnarly limbs & reddish cracked bark of considerable rustic beauty. Their bark was traditionally used by leather tanners. Ours is a recently installed youngster five feet tall & not yet very bushy, but already the thickest central trunk & branches show the craggy bark.
The laurel-like evergreen leaves have red veins when young, & the leaf stems are red. Charming clusters of pink-flushed white honey-scented bellflowers resemble the blooms of blueberries or manzanitas. The flowers appear by mid-October & into winter.
Being self-fertile, it sets round fruit in winter, which very slowly ripen from yellow to pink to red & are bumply or warted. The fruits take a full year to ripen, so that a mature specimen will have new flowers & ripening fruits simultaneously.
The fruits don't really look like strawberries because they're perfectly round, but the size & color is otherwise pretty close, hence the tree's name. The flesh is amber & has a texture similar to strawberries except mealy. These fruits are edible but insipid so rarely eaten raw, though birds like them. The species name "unedo" means "I eat one," with the implication that few people would bother to eat a second one.
Yet some people report that the fruits they've tried were sweet & pleasant. Apparently they are tastier fresh from the branches when ripening in hotter regions, though in chillier temperate zones they're bland. Also wild trees may have more pleasant fruit than cultivated clones. Any specimen's ripened fruits can be delicious used for preserves or mixed with sweeter fruits for canning.
The fruit is very commonly used to make fermented aromatic drinks such as Medronho or Medronheira in Portugal, Tsipuoro in Greece, Fior de Corbezzolo in Sicily, Creme d'Arbouse in Corsica, & other beverages. Because of their high sugar content the fruits can ferment right on the tree, & birds, or people, eating the fermented berries can become intoxicated.
In a heavy fruiting year considerable mess can be made on a sidewalk or patio, which should be considered when placing the tree. Ours is by the sidewalk & dropping fruits could be a nuisance when it is older & larger. We're kind of counting on birds & squirrels taking care of it, but if it ends up being messy, so be it, we'll just have to spray the sidewalk periodically.
Hardy for zones 7 through 10, the strawberry Tree is native to Turkey, Lebanon, much of southern Europe, & surprisingly Ireland, where it is believed to be a pre-Ice Age relic. It is closely related to the madrona (A. menziesii) native to our local environs of the Pacific Northwest.
It likes most any soil condition in full sun. They produce a long taproot so cannot be transplanted once they are established, but thanks to that taperoot they eventually become extremely drought hardy. They require no fertilizing.
They have a naturally formal rounded shape & require no pruning, unless a specimen is to be trained as a single-trunked tree, which will take considerable attention to restrict its desire to be multi-trunked.