Why Are Bananas Berries, But

Strawberries Aren't?
Despite its name, the strawberry isn't a true berry. Neither is the raspberry or the blackberry. But the banana, it turns out,
is a berry, scientifically speaking, as are eggplants, grapes and oranges. So what's the deal? Why are berries so very
hard to define?
The discrepancy in berry nomenclature arose because people called certain fruits "berries" thousands of years before
scientists came up with a precise definition for the word, said Judy Jernstedt, a professor of plant sciences at the
University of California, Davis. Usually, people think of berries as small, squishy fruit that can be picked off plants, but the
scientific classification is far more complex, Jernstedt said.
Botanically speaking, a berry has three distinct fleshy layers: the exocarp (outer skin), mesocarp (fleshy middle) and
endocarp (innermost part, which holds the seeds). For instance, a grape's outer skin is the exocarp, its fleshy middle is
the mesocarp and the jelly-like insides holding the seeds constitute the endocarp, Jernstedt told Live Science.
The same layered structure appears in other
berries, including the banana and watermelon,
although their exocarps are a bit tougher, taking
the form of a peel and a rind, respectively.
In addition, to be a berry, a fruit must have two or
more seeds. Thus, a cherry, which has just one
seed, doesn't make the berry cut, Jernstedt said.
Rather, cherries, like other fleshy fruit with thin
skin and a central stone that contains a seed, are
called drupes, she said.
Moreover, to be a berry, fruits must develop from
one flower that has one ovary, Jernstedt said.
Some plants, such as the blueberry, have flowers
with just one ovary. Hence, the blueberry is a true
berry, she said. Tomatoes, peppers, cranberries,
eggplants and kiwis come from a flower with one
ovary, and so are also berries, she said.
Other plants, such as the strawberry and the
raspberry, have flowers with more than one ovary.
"Raspberries have those little subunits," Jernstedt said. "Each one of those little subunits comes from an individual ovary.
And those subunits are actually [called] drupes."
Each drupe contains a seed; that's why wild raspberries and blackberries are so crunchy, according to Jernstedt.
Because these types of fruit consist of so many drupes, they're called aggregate fruit, Jernstedt said. A strawberry is also
an aggregate fruit, but instead of having multiple drupes, it has multiple achenes, the little yellow ovals on the fruit's
surface, which each contain a seed.
Oranges are a subtype of berry called hesperidium, said Courtney Weber, a berry breeder at Cornell University in New
York. Like other berries, oranges have three fleshy layers, have two or more seeds, and develop from one flower with
one ovary. But citrus fruits contain distinct segments, a property that differentiates these fruits from other berries and
gives them the subtype status, Weber said. (The number of sections is related to the number of carpels, Jernstedt said.)
In all, berry categorization "Is kind of chaotic," Jernstedt said. "And the scientists feel that way too. There are always
attempts to impose some order on fruit classification. But this has been going on for a couple of centuries, so don't hold
your breath that it's going to be solved soon."
In other words, it can be difficult to classify nature's many fruits, which evolve without a thought about how scientists will
view them.
"Flowering plants have devised a number of ways to produce seed and to get that seed distributed," Webber told Live
Science. "Having the fleshy fruit types that we eat is just nature's way of getting animals to eat this fruit and seed and
distribute them."
https://www.livescience.com/57477-why-are-bananas-considered-berries.html