Strawberry, Mock or False

Strawberry, Mock or False (Duchesnea indica) also known as Gurbir and Indian strawberry, it has strawberry-like foliage and an aggregate accessory fruit similar to true strawberry. This groundcover-like plant spreads easily by stems and seeds to become seriously invasive. It can be controlled with the Agralawn Crabgrass Killer. This is the weed at my place where I learned about the power of this organic product. 

If you don't mind the mock strawberry in whatever location you've found it, the plant is edible and has some medicinal uses. From the "How to Cook a Weed" blog by Mallory O'Donnell, the January 11, 2015 post "Mock Strawberry: A Disdained Common Edible," offers this statement:

These wild “strawberries” were of course not true wild strawberries (which are far from flavorless) but the invasive, pernicious ground cover known as Potentilla indica or Duchesnea indica. The confusion over classification is a recent one and Duchesnea is still mainly used. Potentilla seems to be the more accurate fit (though I am hardly a botanist), since that genus contains the cinquefoils whose leaves are used in very much the same way as those of mock strawberry.

 

Leaves? That’s right. For years and years I have eaten the charmingly inoffensive fruit of the mock strawberry without realizing that the far more interesting and useful part of the plant was staring me in the face. 

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