When my friend and I were walking in Putnam earlier this year, I noticed a low-growing white flower that looked maybe a little strawberryish. Imagine my surprise when I later found what appeared to be that same type of plant growing in my own back yard. And it wasn’t just an individual plant or two. It has started to take over the yard, even outcompeting the dwarf cinquefoil, and I can’t imagine how it managed to spread so far without my having noticed it sooner
Naturally, I attempted to identify the plant. I read the description of wild strawberry, and it did seem to fit the bill (white flowers with five petals, growing by runner, three-part leaves, etc.). However, when I compared images of the flowers, they were similar but not the same.
So I did some more research. I now believe the plant is swamp dewberry, which is in the same family (Rubus) as the strawberry, but it’s more similar to the blackberry. Indeed, the fruits that are now developing look like tiny blackberries. Swamp dewberries are said to be edible but overly tart, and as I already mentioned, they’re quite small. I may try one, if I remember to, but they’re ripening so slowly that I may well forget about them by the time they’re finally ready for picking.
I took some pictures of the swamp dewberry flowers with my camera, and I even managed to get the photos onto my computer, but they’re really low quality. I will have to dig into the settings of my phone to see if I can improve the photo quality for the future. In the meantime, if you’d like to see what swamp dewberry looks like, here’s a link to the Wikipedia page, which has a picture of the flower, and a link to a page at the Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy with a picture that looks a lot like my backyard except that the fruit is riper.