by Sarah Oberlin, Community Scientist
In 2023, I joined the community science website iNaturalist and developed an interest in learning how to identify the plants around me in North Carolina. I decided I would learn how to identify Potentilla indica, commonly known as Mock Strawberry, because it had an appealingly bright red fruit and it was sufficiently distinctive that it was near the top of the Flora of the Southeastern United States online key for the genus Potentilla. As it had no look-alikes in the Southeastern United States (I thought), I felt confident in my ability to identify it consistently. Potentilla indica, long known as Duchesnea indica, is a wildflower native to Asia, but has been found in North America for over 150 years.1 As it is a common weed of lawns, it has a variety of common names: Mock Strawberry, Indian Strawberry, and Snakeberry.2
As I was identifying Potentilla indica observations by myself and others in the United States, I noticed that iNaturalist’s pattern recognition software sometimes suggested the Asian native plant Potentilla hebiichigo as a potential identification, based on their visual similarity. However, I was reliably assured by other US identifiers that Potentilla hebiichigo does not occur in the United States. In September 2024, I decided to learn more about this look-alike Potentilla hebiichigo and started looking up photographs and keys for it online. As I was doing so, I felt a sense of dread. I had definitely seen photos of this plant before, in the United States, and mis-identified as Potentilla indica, potentially hundreds of times!
Given that no botanical authority listed Potentilla hebiichigo as being present in the United States, I feared I would face an uphill battle to convince other identifiers that my forthcoming identifications of Potentilla hebiichigo were correct. Thankfully multiple other iNaturalist identifiers, namely Lisa Appelbaum, “peakaytea”, “bottanydot” and “seblivia”, were willing to look at the keys I had accumulated and came to the same conclusion as I had based on the plant’s morphology. To make others better aware of the presence of Potentilla hebiichigo in the United States, I planned to write a paper on the distribution of the plant based on the iNaturalist data. A couple months of re-examining all “Potentilla indica” observations in the United States ensued.
In doing so, I came across two observations in Greenville North Carolina, about an hour away from where I
live, that seemed like they might be Potentilla hebiichigo plants, based on leaf characteristics. While visiting my sister’s family in Greenville in November, I took the opportunity to go on a nice nature walk to that location with my niece, thirteen year old Ellie Lee, hoping to see Potentilla hebiichigo for the first time in person. I described to Ellie the plant that we were looking for and she pointed out likely candidates as we walked. As its common name suggests, Lesser Mock-strawberry looks like a smaller version of Mock-strawberry, Potentilla indica.3
“Wait, is that…?” We had found one! Ellie and I celebrated and took pictures. I sent our photos to Professor Emeritus Dr. Naohiro Naruhashi, a botanist with the University of Toyama in Japan, and he agreed with my identification. This fueled my determination to write a paper on the subject.
In botany, it is best practice when identifying a plant in a new place to deposit a dried, pressed specimen of the plant to a local or regional herbarium. This allows you to cite that herbarium specimen as evidence in your paper and for other interested parties to examine the specimen as well. I had no experience in making a herbarium specimen so I cold-called the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Herbarium phone number. Thankfully, the curator, Carol Ann McCormick, was able to direct me to an online resource that she had published on the subject.
At this point, it was late December and I feared that the plant was likely to be brown and crumbly from the cold – not suitable for preservation. Nonetheless, I made the trip to Greenville hoping that the plant would have some cold tolerance. When I arrived at the same location, I was overjoyed to see that the plant was not wilted from the cold – it was even flowering and fruiting! This was convenient, since distinguishing Potentilla hebiichigo from Potentilla indica requires the fruit to be present. As the plant was located on a greenway owned by the city of Greenville, I had previously obtained permission from the Parks and Recreation Department to take some plants. Later that evening, I pressed them between newspaper, under the combined weight of my boxes of quilting cotton and heavy books. I made two pressed specimens, thinking that it would be nice for more than one herbarium to have a specimen of this under-reported plant.
About a month later, the pressed specimens were ready. My partner, Nikita, and I made the long drive to the Herbarium in Chapel Hill and were impressed with the collection. The next day, I was gratified to hear that the herbarium’s expert, Bruce Sorrie, had agreed with my identification of the plant as Potentilla hebiichigo and that Carol Ann thought that the second pressed specimen would be suitable for the Smithsonian Institution (US) in Washington, D.C.
As an amateur botanist, it’s very exciting to document that an Asian native plant has spread to the United States and to have contributed the first herbarium specimen of it in North Carolina.
How long has Lesser Mock-strawberry been in the United States? The earliest iNaturalist photographic observation was in 2007 in Texas (see https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/195862166). However, herbarium specimens documented the plant’s presence in Texas even earlier. I’ve looked at digital images of herbarium specimens, and the oldest Potentilla hebiichigo specimen I’ve found thus far was collected as Duchesnea indica on “Hwy 59S; 2 mi N of Corrigan” in Polk County, Texas on 14 April, 1995 by Mark A. LeNoir (BAYLU Accession # 035605; SERNEC catalog # BAYLU046855).5
I submitted my research on Potentilla hebiichigo in the United States (and North Carolina!) to a scientific journal in early February, 2025.
NCU Curator Carol Ann McCormick adds:
Ms. Oberlin’s specimen of Potentilla hebiichigo, a state record for North Carolina, is NCU accession # 690987. A duplicate has been sent to the Smithsonian Institution (US), but has yet to be accessioned. I know that this year I’ll be taking a closer look at every Potentilla I see to determine whether it is Potentilla hebiichigo. If you find Lesser Mock-strawberry, send a specimen to your friendly local herbarium!
SOURCES:
- SERNEC Data Portal. 2025. http//:sernecportal.org/index.php. Accessed on February 20. A cursory search by McCormick on 20 February 2025 revealed a specimen labelled Potentilla collected by Durand in 1839 from Georgia. The specimen (NY barcode 00436338) was later annotated to Potentilla durandii, Fragaria indica, and Duchesnea indica. There may well be older specimens, but many herbarium records have yet to be fully cataloged, so lack searchable dates within SERNEC.
- Weakley, A.S., and Southeastern Flora Team. 2025. Flora of the southeastern United States Web App. University of North Carolina Herbarium, North Carolina Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill, U.S.A. https://fsus.ncbg.unc.edu/main.php?pg=show-taxon-detail.php&lsid=urn:lsid:ncbg.unc.edu:taxon:{C30C4243-CCCE-46C6-8BED-43BA0FEE57CA}. Accessed Feb 20, 2025.
- LeGrand, H., B. Sorrie, and T. Howard. 2025. Vascular Plants of North Carolina [Internet]. Raleigh (NC): North Carolina Biodiversity Project and North Carolina State Parks. Available from https://auth1.dpr.ncparks.gov/flora/index.php. Account for Lesser Mock-strawberry – Potentilla hebiichigo.
- Weakley, A.S., and Southeastern Flora Team. 2025. Flora of the southeastern United States Web App. University of North Carolina Herbarium, North Carolina Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill, U.S.A. https://fsus.ncbg.unc.edu/main.php?pg=show-taxon-detail.php&lsid=urn:lsid:ncbg.unc.edu:taxon:{B572A8C7-2866-4464-8713-66BE0699B8A5}. Accessed Feb 20, 2025.
- Biodiversity occurrence data published by: Baylor University Herbarium (BAYLU). (Accessed through SERNEC Data Portal, http//:sernecportal.org/index.php, 2025-02-20)