Земляника

My sister-in-law is a forestry major here where we live in Russia. When it's the season for земляника (zem-lya-NEE-ka, tiny wild strawberries) she spends several hours a day picking in the woods. Sometimes she takes people with her, but not often. The berries are microscopic and hide under the leaves of larger, taller plants, so you basically have to crawl around on hands and knees until you find a bunch of them in one spot. To get a sense of how small they are, the spoon in the picture is a small teaspoon. Masha mediates while she picks and chain-smokes to keep the mosquitoes away. After about an hour I've had enough. We're lucky she shares with us.

Земляника season is short. I love the anticipation. Friends come back from walks in the woods saying "Almost. The flowers are out." "Just another week. We saw green berries." Now they're here.

Apparently земляника and plain old strawberries are different species of the same genus. I know for a fact that земляника has a much more pronounced aroma and flavor.

One winter several years ago when my son was an infant, I found myself translating letters written by Soviet soldiers during WWII. The work was hard - hard to read and hard to translate. One man called his baby "my little dandelion," and I could see the baby's halo of fuzzy, blond hair.

Another writer said "The земляника is ripe, and I’ve been treated to 'Victoria' in some of the Lithuanian villages. If it weren’t for the war, life would be terrific."

I thought that maybe Victoria was a kind of wine or dessert made from земляника, but some other Russian translators told me it is a cultivar of strawberry. A couple of Russian gardening and botany sites claim that Victoria was the first cultivated strawberry to be introduced in Russia and that it was named after Queen Victoria.