Strawberry Ciflorette - Fragaria ananassa

The Ciflorette strawberry produces medium-sized fruits, with a regular oval shape, ranging in colour from orange to brick red, quite shiny and of excellent taste quality with a good balance of sweetness and acidity, and also highly aromatic. Its exceptional taste makes it highly appreciated as a high-end strawberry. It keeps well but is sensitive to high temperatures. It is a non-perpetual variety, semi-early and with fairly good productivity. It presents intermediate resistance to powdery mildew, phytophthora, anthracnose, and verticillium. Ciflorette is a variety created by Ciref in 1998.

Strawberries can be consumed in multiple ways: they can be eaten raw, with sugar, cream, or sliced thinly and dried to be added to muesli or yogurt. If you have an abundant harvest, you can also make jams, coulis, pies, ice creams or sorbets. Strawberries can also be frozen.

There are 3 categories of varieties:

- wild strawberries or perpetual strawberries, producing small fruits from June to October

- non-perpetual large fruit varieties, flowering only once a year in spring, producing very large fruits around June

- perpetual large fruit varieties, flowering twice a year or continuously, producing large fruits from June to October

Indeed, the wild strawberry or woodland strawberry, present during Roman times and the Middle Ages, was crossed in the 18th century with a species brought from Chile, allowing the obtaining, through successive selections, of different large fruit varieties.

The Strawberry is a hardy perennial belonging to the Rosaceae family. This variety has a stout habit, with evergreen trifoliate, ovate, and dentate leaves. It offers small white flowers with a golden center that will transform into large red fruits. Botanically speaking, we refer to strawberries as pseudocarps, with the achenes (seeds) appearing on the surface of the epidermis.

For harvesting, pick the fruits as they ripen, every 2 or 3 days, ideally in the morning. Strawberries are delicate, pick them with their stalk by pinching the stem 1 to 2 cm (0 to 1in) above it. The texture of the fruit is a good indicator of its ripeness. It should be firm and slightly soft to the touch. Strawberries are rich in vitamins and minerals. They can cause urticating reactions in some individuals as they stimulate the release of histamine in the body.