Facts about Fruit

Stages of flowering and fruit development in the noni or Indian mulberry (Morinda citrifolia) can be observed on a single branch.

Fruits in which part or all of the pericarp (fruit wall) is fleshy at maturity are simple fleshy fruits.

Other fruits are elongated and flattened out naturally and so become thin, like wings or helicopter blades.

In all these examples, the fruit develops from a single flower with numerous pistils.

Botanical terminology for fruits is inexact and likely will remain so.

The sweet flesh of many fruits is "deliberately" appealing to animals, so that the seeds held within are "unwittingly" carried away and deposited at a distance from the parent.

Dry fruits may be either dehiscent (opening to discharge seeds), or indehiscent (not opening to discharge seeds).

Fruits are also found commonly in such manufactured foods as cookies, muffins, yogurt, ice cream, cakes, and many more.

Fruit development continues until the seeds have matured.

The term "fruit" has also been inaccurately applied to the seed-containing female cones of many conifers.

Each flower produces a fruit, but these mature into a single mass.

An example is the raspberry, whose simple fruits are termed drupelets because each is like a small drupe attached to the receptacle.

Human creativity is revealed in the cultivation of wild species to develop new varieties of fruit with diverse tastes, textures, and colors.

Parthenocarpic fruit set may or may not require pollination.

After fertilization, each flower develops into a drupe, and as the drupes expand, they connate (merge) into a multiple fleshy fruit called a syncarpet.

To these two basic definitions the clarification that in botanical terminology, a nut is a type of fruit and not another term for seed, can be added.

Many foods are botanically fruits, but are treated as vegetables in cooking.

Simple fruits can be either dry or fleshy and result from the ripening of a simple or compound ovary with only one pistil.

Fruits are so varied in form and development that it is difficult to devise a classification scheme that includes all known fruits.

The symbiotic relationship between flowering plants with birds and insects as pollinators extends to their fruits.

When such other floral parts are a significant part of the fruit, it is called an accessory fruit.

Pollination is a vital part of fruit culture, and the lack of knowledge of pollinators and pollenizers can contribute to poor crops or poor quality crops.

The strawberry is also an aggregate-accessory fruit, only one in which the seeds are contained in achenes.

An aggregate fruit, or etaerio, develops from a flower with numerous simple pistils.

Some cultivars of citrus fruits (especially navel oranges and mandarin oranges), table grapes, grapefruit, and watermelons are valued for their seedlessness.

Specifically, it is the part of the carpel that holds the ovule(s); after pollination, the ovary will grow into the fruit, while the ovule(s) become the seed(s).

In botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary—together with seeds—of a flowering plant.

Many fruits, like the flowers from which they originate, also offer aesthetic pleasure, through the rich taste or beautiful colors.

No one terminology really fits the enormous variety that is found among plant fruits.

Seeds are ripened ovules; fruits are the ripened ovularies or carpels that contain the seeds.

Variations in fruit structures largely relate to the mode of dispersal of the seeds they contain.

A multiple fruit is one formed from a cluster of flowers (called an inflorescence).

Beyond that can be penalties of a few months in prison up to life imprisonment for the most grievous sexual or physical assaults.

Many animals and birds consume fruits for their nutritive value and at the same time act as dispersal agents for the seeds.

Fruits are the means by which flowering plants disseminate seeds.

Seedlessness is an important feature of some fruits of commerce.

Some fruits have coats covered with spikes or hooked burrs, either to prevent themselves from being eaten by animals or to stick to the hairs of animals, using them as dispersal agents.

Some gymnosperms (the other major division of seed plants, other than angiosperms), such as yew, have fleshy arils that resemble fruits and some junipers have berry-like, fleshy cones.

Most seedless citrus fruits require a pollination stimulus; bananas and pineapples do not.

Fresh and dry fruits are a staple food of humans, and are excellent sources of minerals, vitamins, and enzymes.

The same applies to human beings, for whom both flowers and fruit are a source of pleasure and at the same time an inducement to cultivate the plants from which they came.

Many fruits, including fleshy fruits like apples and mangos, and nuts like walnut, are commercially valuable as human food, eaten both fresh and made into jams, marmalade, and other preserves for future consumption.

A plant that does not produce fruit is known as acarpous, meaning essentially "without fruit."

The ovary eventually comes to form, along with other parts of the flower in many cases, a structure surrounding the seed or seeds that is the fruit.

Culinary "fruits" are not always fruits in the botanical sense.

Fruits, along with vegetables (many of which are actually fruits), are highly recommended as central to good nutrition.

The wall of the fruit, developed from the ovary wall of the flower, is called the pericarp.