SepalFive pointed sepals sit under the petals, with smaller bractlets between them. They stay on the fruit as its leafy cap, the hull.
StamenThe pollen-making part: a thin stalk with an anther on top. Many stamens stand in a ring round the receptacle.
PistilA strawberry flower has many small pistils, all over the receptacle. Each one that is pollinated becomes a single achene.
ReceptacleThe dome in the middle of the flower. Once the flower is pollinated it swells and turns into the juicy part of the strawberry.
Flower stalk (pedicel)Each flower, and later each berry, hangs on its own stalk.
The strawberry 2
AcheneOne of the specks on a strawberry. Each is a tiny dry fruit with one seed inside. Each grew from one pistil.
Flesh (swollen receptacle)The part that is eaten. It is the receptacle of the flower, grown large and soft, which makes the strawberry an accessory fruit.
How this list was compiled: Every name checked on 2026-09-30 against sources read that day; a name is kept only where two of them use it: (1) N. L. Britton and A. Brown, An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (1913, public domain), Fragaria, https://archive.org/details/illustratedflora02brit; (2) S. W. Fletcher, The Strawberry in North America (1917, public domain), https://archive.org/details/strawberryinnort00flet; (3) Wikipedia, Strawberry, Achene, Accessory fruit and Receptacle (botany) (text only). Hints and detail lines are in our own words. Licence: own work
The drawing: Drawn for this site on 2026-09-30 from plain geometry; nothing traced or copied. Licence: own work
How it works
This strawberry flower diagram shows the flower cut lengthwise, with the dome of pistils in the middle. The second drawing is the ripe strawberry, whole and cut, so each part of the berry can be traced back to the flower.
Read the full guide
The flower, then the berry
Numbers 1 to 3 are a petal, a sepal and a stamen. Numbers 4 and 5 are the pistils and the receptacle they cover. Number 6 is the flower stalk. On the berry, number 7 is an achene, which was a pistil, and number 8 is the flesh, which was the receptacle.
Match the flower to the fruit: every pistil becomes one achene, and the dome they sit on becomes the flesh.
The leafy cap on a strawberry is the flower's sepals, still in place.
Questions and answers
What are the parts of a strawberry flower?
Five sepals, five petals, a ring of many stamens and, in the middle, a dome called the receptacle that is covered with many small pistils. The flower stands on a stalk.
Are the seeds on a strawberry really seeds?
Not quite. Each one is an achene, a tiny dry fruit with a single seed inside it. A strawberry carries many, one for each pistil of the flower that was pollinated.
What part of the flower becomes the strawberry?
The receptacle, the dome in the middle of the flower. It swells and becomes the juicy flesh, carrying the achenes out on its surface.
Is a strawberry a berry?
Not to a botanist. It is an accessory fruit, because its flesh grows from the receptacle and not from the ovaries. The true fruits are the achenes.