Once I identified this roadside plant as Indian strawberry (Duchesnea indica), I naturally assumed it to be a native one, somehow associated with American Indians. Instead, this creeping plant with three serrated leaflets and prominent, five-petaled yellow flowers has become naturalized from India. As the National Audubon Society’s Guide to Eastern Wildflowers notes, the plant is decidedly “strawberry-like”. Its fruit’s taste is, to quote Wildflowers of Tennessee, the Ohio Valley, and the Southern Appalachians, “dry and not pleasing.” Indian strawberry is common to waste places and lawns throughout the eastern half of the United States.
