Whenever you have looked at plump, ripe strawberry, you will probably have noticed the outside is covered in tiny pits, with each pit containing a teeny-tiny strawberry seed, right?

Nope.

What you are looking at is hundreds of tiny individual fruit, each containing its own seed. They are a type of “achene” (a fruit containing a single seed). They are a dry fruit and should be considered the true fruit of the strawberry plant.

Inside each fruit, which does not open at maturity, there is a tiny seed. The delicious fleshy part of the plant that we commonly call a strawberry is just accessory tissue, which makes the plant more attractive to hungry birds and other animals, who consume the achenes and subsequently poop the seed-bearing fruit in another location, where hopefully some of them will germinate and grow into a new strawberry plant. (Most new strawberry plants come from existing strawberry plants, which send out thin growths called “runners”. When the runners reach the ground, they send roots into the soil. The original runner dies off and the new roots produce new strawberry plants).