North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Melissa Kacalanos <mijwiz@yahoo.com>]

I tried searching the Geneva, NY experiment station, and I might have been searching wrong, but I can't find any trace of a strawberry breeding program there, or a strawberry called 'Black Beauty.' The talk I attended at Geneva was in the early '90's, and the strawberry breeder who showed the slide of this black strawberry seemed pretty down on it. I don't recall exactly, but he may have implied that he'd already thrown these useless plants away.

On the topic of dark strawberries in general, all I can find is this collection, not inclluding 'Black Beauty,' at Corvallis, Oregon:
http://www.ars-grin.gov/cor/catalogs/fradark.html
There's a photo of the fruit of only one variety, 'Tillikum,' and while it is a pretty saturated red, it's nowhere near the almost-black I remember from that slide. I don't know what color the others in the list are, but maybe some of them are darker.

Melissa