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The term berry, in common parlance and in cuisine, refers generically to any small, edible fruit with multiple seeds. Aggregate fruits such as the blackberry, the raspberry, and the boysenberry are also berries in this sense, but not the botanical.
These fruits tend to be small, sweet, juicy, and of a bright color contrasting with their background to make them more attractive to animals that eat them, thus dispersing the seeds of the plant.
In botany, the berry is the most common type of simple fleshy fruit; a fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. The flowers of these plants have a superior ovary and they have one or more carpels within a thin covering and very fleshy interiors. The seeds are embedded in the common flesh of the ovary. Examples of botanical berries include the tomato, grape, litchi, kumquat, plantain, avocado, persimmon, eggplant, guava, uchuva (ground cherry), and chile pepper.
The fruit of citrus, such as the orange and lemon, is a modified berry called a hesperidium. The fruit of cucumbers and their relatives are modified berries called "pepoes". A plant that bears berries is referred to as bacciferous.
| Botanical parlance | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Berry | Pepo | Hesperidium | Not a berry | ||
| Common parlance | Berry | Grape, Currant, Cranberry, Blueberry, Gooseberry | Strawberry, Blackberry, Raspberry, Boysenberry | ||
| Not a berry | Tomato, Persimmon, Eggplant, Guava, Chili pepper, Pomegranate | Squash, Pumpkin, Gourd, Cucumber, Melon, Cantaloupe, Watermelon, | Orange, Lemon, Lime, Grapefruit | Apple, Peach, Green bean, Sunflower seed, (not a comprehensive listing) | |
See also
External links
- The National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens - Description of berries
- Encarta.msn.com - Differentiation between true berries, pepos, and hesperidia