strawberries in sialkot a garden here with as fine a bed of them as you could like to see by 1859 the madras agrihorticultural society could report pots of strawberries in flower and fruit at its annual show from darjeeling to distant ceylon the british were growing strawberries and apparently not always just for eating in 1871 toi reported on two gentlemen from poona who report says they are both on matrimony intent and i dare say thought a strawberry party as good a place for furthering their viewthese 19th century strawberries might have been suitable for this because they were the fruit of an exceptionally successful marriage the strawberries known in europe and asia for centuries even found in the hills of northern india were too small and low fruiting to be of much interest for cultivation but interest grew when different strawberry varieties were discovered in the americas first small but well flavoured ones in north america and then larger but bland tasting ones in south american in chilein hybrid noel kingsburys fascinating history of plant breeding he explains that sexual differences in plants were not widely understood then and since the first examples of the chilean strawberries taken back to europe in the early 18th century were all female attempts to grow them were not successful but in 1764 nicholas duchesne a french botanist realised chilean strawberries could be crossed with the north american ones creating large berries with good flavour and in the process discovering a lot about plant sex and breedingthese were the berries that rapidly became popular in europe and would still have been a relative novelty when the british brought them to india they might have been signs as plotz argues of imperial agricultural prowess but they were even better signs of the power of globalisation with two types of american berries crossing to form a new version of an old fruit and then sent across the world today they are being projected as examples of indian ingenuity rich red and luscious to eat