Bananas are berries, but strawberries aren't? Are you kidding me?
I've spent my entire life thinking I knew what a berry was, but it turns out I was wrong.
Apparently lots of things that I thought were berries really aren't, and lots of things that I thought weren't berries are!
According to the folks at LiveScience and Wikipedia, a fruit must have the following characteristics in order to be classified as a berry:
It must have two or more seeds instead of a single "stone".
It must be produced from a single flower containing just one ovary.
It must have three distinct fleshy layers: an exocarp (outer skin), a mesocarp (fleshy middle) and an endocarp (innermost part, which holds the seeds).
These fruits (and many others) technically qualify as berries because they meet all of above criteria:
Bananas
Blueberries
Watermelons
Cranberries
Tomatoes
Eggplants
Cucumbers
These fruits do not qualify as berries because they lack one or more of the requisite criteria:
Strawberries
Raspberries
Blackberries
Cherries
Olives
Coconuts
As you can see, this can be quite confusing.
Now, after writing this post I'm suddenly hungry for some nice, juicy berries - so I'm off to the store by buy some…tomatoes?
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