In Slovenian nature, there are three species of strawberries: Fragaria viridis, Fragaria vesca and Fragaria moschata. Even though the species are not very similar, it is difficult to determine the species with Slovenian identification key Mala flora Slovenije (Martinčič et al., 2007). Therefore I made a new key (based on foreign literature and my own observation) which includes more discriminative morphological characters. It can be used to identify fresh plants as well as herbarium material (underground parts or stolon are not necessary for determination). Discriminative characters were verified on the material from herbarium LJU at Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, in Department of Biology. 20 characteristics were measured or observed on 141 herbarium samples. At the same time I verified correctness of determinations of the collected material. It turned out that only 72% of material was correctly determined. Most plants were wrongly determined as F. viridis (74%). After the revision, I made the distribution map that was based on information from herbarium labels. F. vesca and F. moschata are common, while F. viridis is rare; all three species occur almost across whole Slovenia. The distribution patterns of F. vesca and F. moschata, shown in my map, represent the true distribution in Slovenian nature rather well. For F. viridis, my sample was too scarce. Only 8% of the revised material was identified as F. viridis, which indicates that this species is rare. For better presentation of distribution of F. viridis, I would need more data. I believe that the new identification key, which includes more determination characters and explains their states better, can improve the success of identification of the three species in future. Since strawberry is a common, widely spread and well-known plant, is a suitable plant object to work with in schools. It can be used to achieve many learning objectives in the sixth grade of Slovenian primary school. I presented it in a form of a lesson plan for two school hours.
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