Re: Fruit or Vegetable
>14/09/98 EDT, you wrote:
>A pumkin is a fruit,
>Any thing that has seeds in it is a fruit, anything that doesn't have seeds in
>it is a vegtable,
>On Mon, 14 Sep 1998 Keith wrote:
>That makes a strawberry a vegatable!
It gets a little more involved than that.
In the botanical sense, a fruit is the ripened ovary and the seeds
within OR upon it, together with other parts of the flower that
usually change significantly in the process of ripening. So a Pumpkin
is definitely a fruit.
In that case a strawberry could be considered a fruit but, it is
correctly called a Receptical (watch one as it develops from a flower
sometime) in which the true fruits are actually all the small achenes
(a dry one seeded fruit that does not split) incorrectly called seeds
on the surface of the receptical.
A pumpkin is actually a Berry, a hard fleshy or pulpy fruit that does
not (for this definition) split, has few or many seeds but no stone
and usually but not always has a hard rind. Other true berries are
blueberry, grape, cucumber, tomato and eggplant.
Fleshy one seeded stone fruits like peaches, cherries and olives are
called Drupes.
Raspberry and Blackberry etc. are not actually berries but Drupelets
(a little drupe, often one of many).
Of course common usage of the names throws all this out the window but
these are the correct botanical definitions as I understand them.
Now go and enjoy a nice drupe and receptical salad as you watch your
900 pound berries grow!
Brian
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