It's not a tree you would grow for its fruit alone (though we'll come to that), but it is modestly good to look at all year round. Its leaves are tough, leathery, shiny, but just now, with other flowers withering, the arbutus puts out its creamy bunches of blossom, the shape of lilies-of-the-valley. The fruits are now ripening: round, cherry-sized, the surface dimpled like a strawberry. The arbutus, thanks to the song "My Love's an arbutus, by the borders of Lene" is largely associated with the Killarney area, but it grows well north of that. So little are the fruits thought of that footpaths may be scattered with berries and red stains.
It is, of course, common in Mediterranean countries and has been found wild by a roadside in the Pyrenees Orientales area in September, its fruits a handy snack on a hilly road.
Interesting history. About 1586 an unknown official sent the strawberry tree to England, as recorded in the State Papers of Ireland. "You shall receive herewith a bundle of trees called the woolaghan tree, whereof my Lord of Leicester and Mr Secretary Walsingham are both very desirous to have some, as well for the fruit as the rareness of the manner of bearing, which is after the kind of the orange to have blossoms and fruit green or ripe all the year long, and the same of a very pleasant taste, and growing nowhere else but in one part of Munster, from whence I have caused them to be transported immediately unto you, praying you to see them safely delivered and divided between them my said Lord and Mr Secretary, directing that they may be planted near some ponds or with a great deal of black moory earth, which kind of soil I take will best suit them, for that they grow best in Munster about loughs and prove to the bigness of cherry trees or more and continue long."
That's from A history of Gardening in Ireland by Keith Lamb and Patrick Bowe, published for the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin, by the Stationery Office. The fruit, if taken too early, tastes only of cotton wool. It must be left to become a deep red colour before it is palatable. Within a few hundred yards one tree, open to the sun, is already showing deep red berries; another, shaded by a big oak, does not produce that colour until, perhaps, well into November.
The only cookbook found with arbutus recipes is Jane Grigson's Fruit Book. Arbutus jelly - wonderful if you have enough fruit. Also boiled briefly in sugar and water and laid on whipped cream in pastry cases. Or, showing off, to top fruit salad.