Mock strawberry

Mock strawberry (Potentilla indica, formerly Duchesnea indica), also called Indian mock strawberry or false strawberry, is a low, trailing perennial generally under a foot tall that looks superficially like a wild strawberry. It has trifoliate (three-leaflet) leaves with rounded teeth and spreads by stolons (runners) that root at the nodes to form chains of new plants. The clearest separator from true wild strawberries is flower color and fruit: mock strawberry has yellow, five-petaled flowers (wild strawberries have white flowers) followed by a small, red, strawberry-like fruit that is dry, spongy, and tasteless rather than sweet. It tolerates shade and close mowing.

Mock strawberry spreads by stolons into creeping patches that displace turfgrass and create uneven, low-growing mats with a coarser, different-textured appearance; the connected colonies reduce turf density and uniformity, and the yellow flowers and red fruits give an infested lawn a weedy, mottled look while the weed competes with grass for moisture, light, and nutrients.

Mock strawberry is a perennial that overwinters and regrows from its crown and stolon network. It reproduces both by seed and vegetatively by rooted stolons, which run across the soil surface and root at the nodes to establish new daughter plants, allowing it to spread laterally into a connected colony. Flowering and fruiting occur through the growing season, and the seed within the red fruit adds to the seedbank while the stolons drive most local invasion.

Mock strawberry favors moist areas and tolerates both shade and close mowing, so it commonly invades damp, shaded, low-maintenance lawns and turf edges where competition from grass is weak. Thin, stressed stands and areas with persistent moisture give the stolons room to root and spread; its tolerance of low mowing lets it persist where many broadleaf weeds would be cut out.