Star

Star is a southern highbush from Paul Lyrene's University of Florida program, made in Gainesville in 1981 as the cross FL80-31 x O'Neal, selected out of a high-density fruiting nursery in 1983, first propagated in 1987 under the number FL87-139-S, and trialed across north Florida and south Georgia from 1989 to 1995 before US plant patent PP10675 issued to Florida Foundation Seed Producers. Like other southern highbush cultivars it is a low-chill V. corymbosum carrying wild Florida germplasm in its background, and needs only about 400 hours below 45 F to break dormancy properly. Its defining commercial trait is synchrony rather than size: the patent records roughly 80 percent of the crop ripening in the narrow window between 20 April and 10 May, about 60 days after flowering, which lets a grower strip a block in very few passes. That concentrated harvest, plus a very firm berry with a small dry scar, is why Star became one of the most planted southern highbush cultivars in the southeastern US. UF/IFAS is candid about the tradeoffs, and the cultivar has a real geographic ceiling to the south.