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This week, I’m excited to share the Chilean origins of strawberries, specifically the Kelleñ, a wild white strawberry widely consumed by Indigenous people in Chile long before Spain’s invasion. Unfortunately, the Kelleñ is currently at risk of disappearing. Enthusiasts and botanists in Chile are working to save this unique fruit through various projects, from genetic studies to encouraging people to grow it in their gardens.
One of my earliest memories of strawberries involves “frutilla” stands along the highways in central Chile. These strawberries are etched in my memory as the most delicious I’ve ever tasted. This was early summer when strawberries were in season. In the UK, strawberries are available year-round in supermarkets, but I hesitate to eat them out of season. Even during their season, strawberries in the UK lack the sweetness of those I have tasted back home. I used to think this was just a form of nostalgic bias, but, recently, I’ve learned that Chile has some of the best soils and climates for growing strawberries. Wild strawberries used to grow abundantly, and the Chilean variety is five times sweeter than modern varieties. It turns out my bias had a reason after all.
From a botanical perspective, strawberries are not considered true fruits. Instead, they are classified as aggregate accessory fruits. The "seeds" on the outside are actually individual ovaries of the flower, each containing a seed inside 😱. Regarding their origins, most of the strawberries we eat today trace back to South America, particularly Chile. In the indigenous Mapuche language (Mapudungun), they are originally called Kelleñ, better known as the Chilean strawberry.
Chilean strawberries (F. chiloensis) are white, and along with its North American cousin F. virginiana, are parents of the commercial strawberry (F. ananassa).1 At least two indigenous communities, the Mapuche, between Rio Bio-Bio and south-central Chile, and the Picunche, between Rio Itata and Rio Bio-Bio, had domesticated strawberries before colonisation2. While white and red-fruited forms were developed, the white form (because of fruit size) seemed to have been preferred as the red-fruited types are not mentioned frequently in the literature.
At the time of the Spanish colonisation of Chile, F. chiloensis was widely grown in small garden plots.
As the Spanish continued their conquest of South America, they carried F. chiloensis with them up the western coast to Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. In the meantime, in Europe, there was a small and almost flavourless variety of garden strawberries. Despite 400 years of domestication, European strawberries remained tiny in the 1700s. Conversely, in Chile, the indigenous had been cultivating strawberries for much longer, perhaps over a thousand years. American strawberries are unique and complex because they have eight sets of chromosomes (aka octoploid), in contrast, most species (including humans) are diploids (two sets of chromosomes). The native species of strawberries found in Europe, North America and Asia are diploids, but the wild octoploids are almost exclusively distributed across the Americas.
In 1714, a French spy, Amédée Francois Frézier, who was on a military mission near Concepción, Chile, marvelled at the unusually large size of the chilean strawberry. Frézier wrote that, in Concepción, strawberries were the only fruit to be sold at the market. Produce was otherwise freely traded among the native people, according to Frézier. He added that they grew, “as big as a walnut, and sometimes as a Hen’s egg”. Marvelled with this exotic fruit, he deliberately took specimens from the central-south region of Chile back to France.
Frézier took five strawberry plants, but there was a problem, in France, they were not bearing fruits. Botanists didn’t know at the time that some strawberry species are dioecious, meaning that each individual is of a single-sex, therefore, they require opposite-sexed plants to bear fruits. Frézier only took female plants, because they were the plants that had fruits.
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In 1764, Antoine Nicolas Duchesne presented to Louis XV a pot of Chilean strawberries containing fruit so large and beautiful that the king ordered an illustrator to paint them for the royal library. Louis XV then financed Duchesne to collect every known strawberry species in Europe for the royal garden at Versailles. As great as they were though, Duchesne’s fruits were sterile. He had used a European species, Fragaria moschata, similar enough to pollinate the female Chilean plants and stimulate them to bear fruit, but not to create viable seeds. At a similar time farmers in Brest, France were planting the Chilean variety near the Virginia variety and plants started to bear fruits.
In 1766, Duchesne became the first person to finally understand that the parents of these various hybrids were the two American strawberries. They had started as a single species in ancient prehistory, spread across the Americas, been bred larger by Indigenous in South America, and reunited in France. Duchesne named the offspring Fragaria ananassa (the pineapple strawberry) because “the perfume of the fruit is closely similar to the pineapple”. Like its Chilean parent, the fruits were big, yet they were more colourful and the flavour more pronounced. What’s more, the plants were self-fertile, so every plant could fertilize itself.
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On the brink of extinction
The introduction of the European and Californian cultivars of strawberries to South America during the XX century has almost eliminated the already existent cultivars of Kelleñ. The current modern varieties need a large amount of inputs (pesticides) and have pushed away the native chilean variety.
In a cruel twist of fate, the garden strawberry arrived back in Chile in 1830 and slowly, over the decades, came to dominate local fields, nearly wiping out a crop that had been grown there for centuries. The white strawberry has almost disappeared from South America. It’s grown only in the high hills of two neighbouring towns in the Nahuelbuta mountain range. Even in these towns, Contulmo and Purén, it’s a rare delicacy.
Climate change is also impacting its production. Winter snows that help induce flowering, are increasingly rare in its native regions. Droughts are more frequent and impact the short strawberry season, which runs from December to early January (early summer in the Southern Hemisphere).
Currently, several projects aim to protect the worldwide genetic patrimony of the white strawberry. This fruit symbolizes food sovereignty for the Mapuche people and other inhabitants of the region, and it deserves protection. To raise awareness, a tourism route called "La Ruta de la Frutilla Blanca" has been established in the south-central region of Chile. Additionally, ethnobotanist Cecilia Céspedes is working with researchers to study the fruit and publish their findings. María José Romero has also written about the activism of "Guardianes del Kelleñ," explaining how people can grow the fruit to promote its distribution nationwide.
The white strawberries are more than just a rare fruit; they are a vital link to our past and a significant part of our cultural identity. Protecting the Kelleñ means preserving the rich heritage and food sovereignty of the Mapuche people and the broader Chilean community. By supporting conservation efforts and spreading awareness, we can ensure that future generations will also have the opportunity to experience the unique taste and historical significance of the white strawberry.
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