Found this giant mutant strawberry in my pot of mara des bois 
should i try to sprout the seeds? Photos are comparison of how big it is compared to its siblings. Doesn’t look like i have anymore giant ones from this plant.
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Grow it 
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Ive had a few grow to that size on my own. Seems to happen once in awhile.
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Do you know if they grow bigger ones from seed?
If you plant seeds the seedlings will be variable.
There’s a couple things going on here…
- First, when there is a clustering fruit with flowers which bloom in succession rather than all at once, the first fruit to form will typically be bigger than the later fruits in the cluster. This is because it is usually central in the cluster with the thickest stem and most direct route for nutrients to flow.
- The second thing going on here is that the fruit is slightly fasciated which means it grew extra wide. That is pretty darn common in strawberries and you’ll see it many more times as you continue to grow strawberries.
You’re really not any more or less likely to get larger fruited specimens if you plant seeds from the larger fruit or the smaller fruit from the same plant. It’s the same mix of genes either way.
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Ooo i didn’t know any of this, thank you
No, modern strawberries are hybrids they are not true from seeds.
I don’t think mara des bois is a modern strawberry
And that doesn’t make sense if they’ve pollinated themselves. I’ve heard this about Citrus as well but they’ve all grown true to seed since they’re self pollinating
Citrus is a different issue in which many seeds are clones of the parent rather than self-pollinated. Unless you don’t think the 90’s are recent enough to count as “modern” then ‘Mara Des Bois’ is a modern cultivar. When a plant has higher ploidy levels (like many modern strawberries) there are infinitely more possible gene combinations even when self pollinating compared to diploid types like wild alpine strawberries.
Yes they are (1991) USPP8517P - Strawberry plant named "Mara Des Bois" - Google Patents
All of the ‘big’ modern stawberries are hybrids
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Mara des Bois do that. They are part wild.
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A couple of things here. First, this is pretty typical fruiting for Mara des Bois. I have about 150 sq ft of them and I’d say about 10% of the fruits are that size.
Second, self-pollinating doesn’t mean comes true from seed. Genes get shuffled, you end up with two copies of a gene for smaller fruit instead of one of each for large and small, etc, and the offspring can be surprisingly different from the parent. This is especially true of hybrid varieties. Some citrus (but not all) can sometimes come true from seed because of polyembryony. Sometimes seeds will have multiple embryos, one of which is a clone of the parent.
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