How Do Strawberry Plants Reproduce?
Strawberry plants can reproduce through sexual reproduction with fruit and seed, as well as through asexual reproduction by sending out runners to create new plants, according to Garden Guides. Runners, also called stolons, are sent out from the crown of a strawberry plant along the ground. Nodes begin to appear on each stolon at set intervals. Each of these nodes is capable of becoming a daughter plant the following season.
Runners are commonly used in a commercial strawberry production setting to propagate new strawberry plants, according to Garden Guides. In some types of strawberry plants, few runners appear, and in this case, strawberry plants can be manually propagated by dividing branch crowns from the original crowns at the end of the growing season.
Strawberry flowers possess both male and female parts, making them a perfect self-pollinating flower capable of forming fruit and seeds on their own, according to Garden Guides. While cross pollination creates stronger plants, it’s not necessary for the survival of a strawberry plant. Strawberry flowers are made up of 600 pistils, or female parts, which, when fertilized during pollination, become achenes, or the seeds visible on the outside of a strawberry. When eaten by birds, these seeds can be deposited miles from their original location through the droppings of birds.
