Alright, so we all know that person
who, every time you say anything,
they're like "Actually, technically, tomatoes aren't vegetables!"
And... I just.. before we do this episode,
I just want to encourage you not to be that person
But, knowing the real classifications of the stuff that we eat
can tell you a lot about where fruits and vegetables
come from and how they're developed.
So it's pretty interesting
just don't use it to be an insufferable pedant.
For example, officially speaking,
Anything that is a root, stem or leaf of a plant
qualifies as a vegetable.
meaning that some things that you might ordinarily
consider a fruit, is actually a vegetable.
Rhubarb, for instance, we think of a
kind of like a fruity thing because
it's in pie and it tastes so sweet
but it's the stalk of a plant, so its a vegetable.
Vegetable pie...who thought of that?
Corn, zucchini, and green beans, on the other hand
all fruit, so are tomatoes.
That's because these foods are not
roots, stems, or leaves.
They're ovaries.
Hopefully that doesn't make you feel too weird.
So yeah, fruits are the ovaries of a flowering plant
that develop after its seeds are fertilized
or, sometimes, after they've been triggered to
develop without fetilization.
From the plant's perspective, surrounding its seeds
with something soft and juicy and delicious
increases the chances that those seeds will get eaten
and then spread around in nice fertile
piles of poo.
So broccoli and cauliflower are not fruit
even though they are flower buds because they're unopened
the flower hasn't transformed.
True fruits come in lots of different types
and some of them make for excellent anatomy lessons
One key factor for botanists in categorizing fruits is
is how many ovaries the flower had.
So berries by definition are fruits that come from
from a single ovary with multiple seeds.
That makes grapes, bananas, peppers and tomatoes
all different types of berries.
So hold onto your shorts because raspberries
and blackberries are something totally different
They're called aggregate fruits
a whole bunch of little fruits grouped together.
And strawberries aren't berries either
in fact, the tasty red part of the strawberry isn't
even a fruit. Its a special kind of plant structure
called a fleshy receptacle.
You actually have to look much closer at the receptacle
to see the fruit, which are called achenes.
They're dry, one-seeded fruits that speckle
the red surface of the strawberry
Sunflowers produce another achene that you probably
know as sunflower seeds.
Nuts are fruits too and their shells are coats
developed from the ovary wall.
That includes things like chestnuts and hazelnuts
But technically, walnuts and pecans are not nuts,
along with other single ovary fruits like peaches and
and plums and coconuts, they're called drupes.
Drupes only have one seed with a distinct skin,
covering a fleshy middle layer.
In a drupe, the inner layer is often called stone-like,
and if you've ever accidentally chomped on a peach pit,
you understand why.
Now if you want to get super fancy with your botanical terminology
raspberries and blackberries are specifically
aggregate drupes, and each small section is called a druplet.
But many fruits are more than just a ripened flower ovary.
Take pome fruits, for instance, like apples and pears.
Pome fruits are known as accessory fruits because
there's so much more going on in them than a simple ovary
The ovary makes up only the core of the fruit.
The flesh of the fruit is actually modified
flower petals and sepals, the flower parts that cover a bud
leaving the knobby receptacle at the base of the flower.
And when you eat hesperidium fruits
you're also getting a mouthful of the unexpected
This category includes fruits with tough rinds
and little partitions, like lemons and grapefruits
and oranges. Turns out that those small packed
juicy bits in each section, called juice sacs
were once tiny hair like cells on the inside of the ovary,
but they filled bursting with goodness as the fruit ripened.
So the next time you drink a pulpy glass of OJ
enjoy your mouthful of fruit hair.
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