Fun fact: strawberry was admitted to the psychiatric yard once pepper and cucumber joined the berry club.
Fun fact: the psychiatric yard is where the psych ward doctors are allowed to go outside and play for an hour everyday, and where a psychologist is most likely to be shanked by a psychiatrist.
First rule of working in the psych ward: Don't join a psych gang.
Fun fact: Strawberry is called an accessory fruit because its seeds are on the outside, so the seeds themselves are the real "fruits" (in the same way each grain of rice or wheat is itself a fruit, well technically the fruit consists of the grain plus the outer pod/husk that gets removed when harvested). The red flesh we like to eat is the accessory fruit because it in itself does not contain seeds.
Raspberries and blackberries are called aggregate fruits because they're essentially many fruits attached together as a single structure. Actually, a strawberry is called an aggregate accessory fruit because it has many "fruits" directly attached to an accessory structure.
If every Uni professor started each lecture with "fun fact: " I bet I'd learn alot more
Some of my profs did! I had one class where the prof would have optional "bonus content" not in the syllabus as a further incentive for people to come to class instead of just reading the lecture slides later.
Great explanation thank you! Interesting facts :)
So bananas are aggregate fruits?
No, bananas are berries.
The thing is that the botanical definition of berries doesn't match perfectly with the everyday definition. That doesn't make the latter wrong, it just has other applications
Yeah, it's like the whole "tomatoes are actually a fruit" thing. So are zucchinis and eggplants, but nobody ever brings that up. It's always tomatoes.
There's a botanical definition and a culinary definition. So, that doesn't mean that somebody who calls a tomato a vegetable is wrong. And don't put any tomatoes in my fruit salad!
Vegetable is also exclusively a culinary definition. Vegetables are essentially any edible plant structure that are not sweet and aren't the seeds directly (which are grains or nuts). Typically vegetables are flowers, leaves, stems, or roots, but some non-sweet fruits like cucumbers, peppers, and green beans are also squarely in the vegetable category despite definitely being fruits, no reason they can't be both.
It's intelligent to know that tomatoes are fruits and it's wise not to put then into a fruit salad
A tomato based fruit salad is called salsa.
Permanently Deleted
Come up with an everyday definition for berry that includes strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries but excludes grapes, figs, and cherry tomatoes without identifying any particular fruit by name.
I could try to but I don't need to. The fact that you could easily name some fruits that aren't berries is proof enough that you have a concept of what a berry is and what isn't. Coming up with a definition would be the next step.
So I agree that "definition" is the wrong word. I should have said "concept". Besides: what's wrong with definitions that are just a list of elements?
Sure. One is grown on a berry farm, the other isn't.
Use for ice cream, pies, and smothies berries.
Come up with a definition of "chair" that applies to all chairs and doesn't apply to any non-chairs.
Or "sport", or "hole".
Doesn't mean none of these things exist, or that you have to listen to a scientist who insists on a definition where barstools aren't chairs but treestumps are.
Seed bearing section of a plant. Or an ovary.
Some berries are just Berry In Name Only.
Bananas and watermelons are berries? Huh.
The scientific definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit that came from a single ovary in the flower. Thats it. I don't even know why they used the name berry on this term because it makes no sense and I tell you this as someone studying botany. Like none of the nuts you know are true nuts either. If a nuts shell opens on its own it's not a nut so peanuts, walnuts and almonds are not nuts because if you plant these in fresh soil they will sprout and the shell opens. However if you plant a fresh hazelnut the shell stays on while the plant germinates from the seed, hence it's a true nut. So stupid I know. This has use in botany but these botanical definitions have no use for normal people. That's why we talk about "botanical definitions" and "culinary definitions". In the common culinary definition a berry is a small freshy fruit which is the definition you know.
Bonus: in botany everything from a flower is a fruit. That means wheat is a fruit, rice is a fruit, beans are fruits, peas are fruits, all nuts are fruits, every seed is a fruit, a pine cone is a fruit, and it just goes on. But no one in their right mind would make a fruit asket with pine cones right? The botanical definition is useless outside the field of botany.
Just to add random info/trivia: it's interesting to note that this mess between "botanical fruit" and "culinary fruit" is largely language-dependent. In Portuguese for example it doesn't happen - because botanical fruit is "fruto" (with "o") and culinary fruit is "fruta" (with "a").
So for example, if you tell someone that cucumber is a "fruto", that is not contentious; you're just using a somewhat posh word if you aren't in a botanical context. And if you tell the person that tomato is a "fruta", you're just being silly.
Berry has no direct equivalent. If you must specify that the fruit comes from a single ovary, you call it "fruto simples" (lit. simple botanical-fruit), as opposed to "fruto múltiplo" (multiple fruit - e.g. pineapple). Popularly people will call stuff like strawberries and mulberries by multiple names, like "frutinhas" (little fruits) and the likes.
Melons and pumpkins are called Panzerbeeren by german botanists.
Beer Tank
I can't be bothered to look up the actual translation, so that is what I'm calling them from now on.
Shell berries.
Tank berry
Wait until your learn that dinosaurs are technically still alive, since birds are dinosaurs.
Wait, aren't humans dinosaurs as well as we derive somehow from lizards? Do lizards count as dinosaurs? Sorry if I get that confused.
OG blueberry still a member, chillaxin with the other true berries.
Feels like Daria debunking the Fashion Club.
Knott's Berry Farm is a house of lies.
Wow you can't just assign your own labels to other people like that.
