Wildflower or weed: strawberry blite

Strawberry blite (Chenopodium capitatum)

Strawberry blight is a wildflower you may have noticed, in all it’s showy, red-berried beauty. It is native across Canada and grows in the disturbed soil of roadsides and gravel pits and also in the fields and clearings in the woods.

You may have seen this plant and not known it because it only truly distinguishes itself when the fruits come out in their showy red whorls of berries around the stems. The berries were crushed and were used as dye by indigenous peoples. They are also edible, though there is a hard black seed in every one. The flavour is slightly sweet.

The flowers have green calyxes with no petals. They whorl around the stems like the berries. The leaves are shaped kind of like a goose’s foot, giving the plant its other name, strawberry goosefoot. The leaves have more renown as a food and can be eaten raw or cooked, like spinach, and are high in vitamins C and A.

Although strawberry blight is kind of weedy in its growth habits some people do cultivate it. It does best at the back or middle of the border, where its 8 to 40 inches can go unnoticed until the berries come out. After the blooms and berries, whether in the first, second or third year, the plant dies. h