Berry

From Encyclopedia Jr, free information reference for Kids

This article is about the fruit. For other uses, see Berry (disambiguation).

Several types of "berries" from the market, but of those shown, only blueberries are true berries.

Wild berry from Sumatran rainforest

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.

In this sense, the tomato is a berry and the strawberry is not; rather, every strawberry on a branch of a strawberry plant makes 1 berry as a whole. Other examples of botanical berries include the 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.

In common parlance and cuisine, the term "berry" refers generically to any small, edible fruit with multiple seeds; in this sense, the strawberry is a berry and the tomato is not. 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.

Alaska wild "berries" from the Innoko National Wildlife Refuge.

[edit] See also

• List of fruits
• False berry

[edit] External links

• The National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens - Description of berries
• Encarta.msn.com - Differentiation between true berries, pepos, and hepseridiums