I recently discovered on the San Marcos Growers website a photo graph of the original Marina strawberry tree (Arbutus X Marina) in Victor and Carla Reiter’s garden on Stanyan Street. This is the tree that is the origin of every Marina strawberry tree in the nursery trade (sadly, it had to be cut down in 2006). San Marcos is closing on January 1, 2026, and I’m not sure how much longer their website will be up, so I’m going to copy the entire story of the history of this tree from their website, lest it be lost if the San Marcos website goes down. Here it is, word for word:

“How Arbutus 'Marina' made its way into cultivation is a curious story. Though many people have appreciated this tree for better than 75 years, it wasn't named and introduced into the general nursery trade by the Saratoga Horticultural Foundation until 1984. The Saratoga Horticultural Foundation had taken cuttings from the tree pictured above that was growing in the late Victor and Carla Reiter's garden, on Stanyan Street in San Francisco, where it had been planted in 1944. Mr. Reiter had acquired his plant in 1933 when he was allowed to take vegetative cuttings from a boxed specimen that was at the Strybing Arboretum. The Strybing Arboretum, then under director Eric Walther, had purchased the boxed tree from the closing down sale of Western Nursery on Lombard Street in the Marina District. Charles Abrahams, the owner of Western Nursery, was thought to have taken cuttings from trees that were sent from Europe for a horticultural display at the 1915 Pan Pacific International Exposition, one of which was probably this beautiful tree. We have seen many interesting stories and other claims about the origins of this tree but the information on this page comes from our own observations of the original tree in the Reiter yard, conversations with Carla Reiter and from the Arbutus 'Marina' Plant Data Culture Sheet that the Saratoga Horticultural Foundation published when they introduced this tree in 1984.

Sadly, as noted in Michael Sullivan's The Trees of San Francisco (2013), the historic and beautiful specimen tree in the Reiter garden began to fall over and was cut down in 2006. Sullivan also correctly noted that this tree "was the generic parent of the nursery stock now sold all over California".

San Marcos Growers planted its first Arbutus 'Marina' in its nursery gardens in 1989. This tree now graces the nursery's main demonstration garden, having grown rapidly since its planting and was officially measured on July 24 2013 for inclusion on the California Big Tree Registry at 44 feet 10 inches tall with an average crown spread of 53 feet 5 inches wide and a trunk circumference of 108" and has grown considerably larger since these measurements were taken.

It is not clear what the parentage of Arbutus 'Marina' is, although there is speculation that it is either a very good selection of Arbutus x andracnoides or a hybrid between A. x andrachnoides and A. canariensis. To further add confusion it should be noted that A. x andrachnoides is itself a naturally occurring hybrid of A. unedo crossed with A andrachne, and A. canariensis is considered by many to be an insular form of A. unedo. We have also seen this plant listed as A. glandulosa 'Marina’, which is particularly interesting as A. glandulosa is a central American species.”