Wood Strawberries Feed Memories : Go a-berriying in sunny piney woods or grow them yourself. Otherwise you’ll live and die with out this pleasure--a pity. These delicacies don’t travel.

There are times in our lives when we’re given something to eat so magical that later its name instantly conjures up the setting where we ate it, how it looked on the plate and the ghost of its flavor. Proust’s madeleines are a celebrated example of this remembrance.

It happened to me with wood strawberries. These are wild strawberries no bigger than the tip of your little finger. Their charm is unbridled and pure, like that of most wild things.

The fruits grow in cool woodlands all over Europe, Asia and America. Often you’ll find them called by their French name, fraises de bois , strawberries of the woods.

I was introduced to wood strawberries in a restaurant in the woods bordering Paris. My companion was Everygirl’s dream of a Frenchman. The restaurant pretended to be a farmhouse with the barn attached; in fact, cows munching hay stared in at us through plate-glass windows.

I was 19 and moonstruck. I’d never seen cows in a restaurant, I’d never had dinner with such a man and I’d never tasted anything like the Lilliputian strawberries that came for dessert.

They were so exquisitely sweet and perfumed, I spooned them up with a passion. Alas, in my ardor, some berries slipped down whole and got caught in my throat, and the young man had to whack me on the back, not exactly what I had in mind.

Our berries that night had been hulled, sprinkled with vanilla sugar and presented heaped in shallow white porcelain bowls. A pitcher of cream was set before us, but Everygirl’s dream didn’t mute the richness of his berries with cream, so of course I didn’t.

You want to eat wood strawberries plain to savor their fineness, just as you eat perfect summer peaches. Even a thread of orange juice or a fruit liqueur is intrusive. Although their delicacy is wasted in a mix, finding these tiny berries in a fruit cup adds the ultimate luxury touch, like eating candied violets on your ice cream.

Certainly you’d never want to cook wood strawberries. With the exception of strawberry jam and strawberry fritters, I’ve never liked a strawberry that’s been cooked. The flavor is too ephemeral to survive, much less be enhanced by, heat. And if you care, cooking destroys much of the berry’s rich supply of Vitamin C.

Unless they’re gritty, which is unlikely, don’t even wash your berries. If washing seems essential, wash them quickly just before hulling, and hull them just before eating.

Wood strawberries haven’t always been uncommon. Until the 18th Century, if there were strawberries on your table, they came from the woods.

But wood strawberries aren’t entirely gone from our tables. Aspects of them survive in our cherished cultivated berries, which are descendants of wild strains.

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Although there are many berries with the universal wild strawberry, Fragaria vesca, in their genes, two wood strawberries native to the Americas are at the heart of today’s garden berries. From small and round to humongous and heart-shaped, most garden berries are the result of crossing native Virginia wood strawberries F. virginiana with wood strawberries from Chile: F. chiloensis . The Chilean berry contributes primarily its larger size; it’s a pale berry with a flavor that hints at pineapple. The small Virginia strawberry contributes the vivid scarlet color and heavenly rich flavor.

Still, no flavor in any strawberry rivals that of the best wood strawberry. Go a-berrying in sunny piney woods and you can taste them. Or grow them yourself. Otherwise you’ll live and die without this pleasure, a pity. These delicacies don’t travel.

Today’s strawberries have been bred to be picked almost-ripe and shipped and put in baskets and displayed and refrigerated, their quality holding for days. Wood strawberries, though, are as ephemeral as a summer breeze. They’re soft when ripe. Their tissue is so fragile--all that sugar poised to dissolve in all those juices--that the fruit must be eaten within hours of picking. That’s why you must grow them yourself.

As to which wood strawberries to grow, most named cultivars belong to one particular group, the Alpine strawberries. Some people think these, which have developed from plants that grew happily in mountain woods, are the finest of all, and you can’t go wrong with any of them.

Charles the Fifth berries are small, pointed and red, with a flavor that Shepherd’s catalogue describes as a combination of strawberries and roses (well, strawberries belong to the rose family).

Alexandria has somewhat larger fruit than most; the berries are very aromatic and start early in the season.

Rugen’s berries are smaller than Alexandria’s, and perhaps less intensely flavored, but the plants are especially productive.

Baron Solemacher is double the size of true wild berries but still smaller than cultivated strawberries.

Besides red, wood berries also come in yellow and white. Pineapple, probably developed from the Chilean, is creamy yellow and one of the earliest to bear. White berries are valuable because birds ignore them. And there’s a red strawberry with glorious variegated leaves that look as though they were pulled through a pot of cream-and-green swirled paint.

In warm winter parts of Southern California, now is the time to plant strawberries--but pinch off any flowers until spring, so all the energy can go into making roots. Where winters are cold, wait till early spring to plant, then pinch off flowers until mid-summer. Strawberries are perennials (the plants last for years), but for optimum quality, consider dividing the plants every three years, replanting them in a different spot.

For culture, think woodland. Although strawberries are tolerant of almost any soil, as long as it’s well-drained, the more humus it has, the more vigorous the plants will be, the more berries will grow and the better their flavor will be. Never allow a strawberry’s soil to dry out; mulching is essential.

Give plants full sun to high shade depending upon how hot your summer days. Sunshine is crucial to developing the color and flavor in wood berries, but too much sun is as bad as too little.

Plants of true wild strawberries can stand a foot tall, and they have long arching runners. Runners are the stems that shoot out from beneath a plant. On their tip is a nascent plant. They touch down on the soil, wriggle in and lo, another strawberry is born. Once the plant has become established--that is, when new leaves appear--you can snip away the runner.

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This robust quality makes strawberries with runners a great crop in roomy beds but a pest where beds are closely planted. Most cultivars of wood strawberries have had runners bred out of them and each plant forms a smallish discreet mound.

The plants of wood strawberries are almost as delicious to look at in the garden as their fruit is to taste. Their small leaves come in triplets, round to oval and daintily pinked around the edges. Whether they gaily send out runners or are compact and well-behaved, wood strawberries make a classic edging. Given a vigorous strain and good growing conditions, wood strawberries will have both blossoms and berries on the plants all summer long. Flowers are tiny and white, and the diminutive fruit, born in mid-to-late summer, sparkles.

Wood strawberries are also ideal for a container. This is especially a good idea if you don’t have nurturing soil or enough sun or you’re apt to neglect watering unless something is staring you in the face. A half-barrel makes a rewarding mini-berry patch.

If you can’t get plants of the berries you’d like, grow them from seed, which is more readily available.

And should you be somewhere in the world--gazing at cows in a restaurant outside Paris, say, or on a Greek island--and you’re given wood strawberries that drive you crazy for their fineness, tuck a few in a napkin, put it in your pocket, then take them out and let the berries dry thoroughly.

When you’re ready to sow them, squeeze the berries over a piece of white paper and watch the seeds float down.

Sprinkle seeds over a flat of vermiculite (from the nursery) in early spring, keeping it moist, then plant out the seedlings when several leaves have formed and the weather has settled. Another garden treasure. Another evocative memory.

Sources

* Plants of Charles the Fifth (shipped in spring): Shepherd’s Garden Seeds, 6116 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018.

* Plants of Rugen: Raintree Nursery, 391 Butts Road, Morton, WA 98356.

* Seeds of true wild strawberry and Alexandria: Richters, Goodwood, Ontario LOC 1AO.

* Seeds of Baron Solemacher: Bountiful Gardens, 18001 Shafer Ranch Road, Willits, CA 95490.

* Seeds of white strawberries: Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery, 2825 Cummings Road, Medford, OR 97501.

* Seeds of pineapple from Park Seed Co., Cokesbury Road, Greenwood, SC 29648-0046.

* Plants with variegated leaves: F. vesca Albo-Marginata from Logee’s Greenhouses, 141 North St., Danielson, CT 06239.