The garden strawberry is a common plant of the genus Fragaria which is cultivated worldwide for its fruit, the (common) strawberry. The fruit is widely appreciated, mainly for its characteristic aroma but also for its bright red color, and it is consumed in large quantities—either fresh, or in prepared foods such as preserves, fruit juice, pies, ice creams, milk shake, etc. Artificial strawberry aroma is also widely used in all sorts of industrialized food products.

The garden strawberry was first bred in Brittany, France in 1740 via a cross of Fragaria virginiana from eastern North America , which was noted for its flavor, and Fragaria chiloensis from Chile and Argentina brought by Amédée-François Frézier, which was noted for its large size.

Cultivars of Fragaria × ananassa have replaced, in commercial production, the woodland strawberry, which was the first strawberry species cultivated in the early 17th century.

The strawberry is technically an accessory fruit, meaning that the fleshy part is derived not from the plant's ovaries (achenes) but from the receptacle that holds the ovaries. Accessory fruits were sometimes in the past referred to as "false" or "spurious" fruits, but those terms have been criticized as "inapt" and are not used by botanists today.