In the past few years, I have been doing a bit of Agriculture and I have been enjoying to a reasonable extent although it is in a small scale but within this period, I have learned the difference between fruits and vegetables because I am opportune to plant both but do you know the difference?
Before I began engaging in farming, I really did not care about it and I didn't really know the difference but my experience over the years has helped me learn to identify and differentiate them. Their classification is not only scientific, it even has a ground from a culinary standpoint.
A quick one, a fruit is the ripened ovary of a seed plant which develops from a new flower. So we can say it is the developed ovary of a flowering plant. Vegetables can be referred to as the edible part of an herbaceous plant and are cultivated for their edible parts. A plant can have both the fruit and have other part of it classified as vegetables. So anything that is a root, stem, or leaf of a plant automatically qualifies as vegetables so a lot of things that you refer to as fruits are vegetables. For instance, Rhubarb which has a fruity taste and so often called a fruit isn't a fruit, instead it is a vegetable while corn, green beans, and tomatoes are fruits and this is because they are not root, stems, or leaves, they are ovaries. So carrots are vegetables and not fruits because they are the root of the plant. They are the ovaries of flowering plants which develops after the seeds have been fertilized or triggered to develop without fertilization sometimes. Plants put their seeds in attractive juicy packaging so they can be easily dispersed by animals. So when you see Broccoli and Cauliflower, do not conclude that they are fruits because they are not even though they are flower buds since they are unopened. Botanist use the amount of ovaries a flower had to categorize fruits and in doing so, different fruits fall into different categories. Berries are categorized as fruits from a single flower with one ovary having multiple seeds and so fruits like Pepper, Banana, Tomatoes and grapes are berries. Why will you refer to pepper as a berry, what happens to Raspberry and Blackberry? Well they are both Aggregate fruits as they develop from multiple ovaries that fuse together in a single flower. Strawberry doesn't even make the leagues of berries as it is not a berry. It is a pseudocarp or what is referred to as false fruit which houses the fruits which are Achenes in its fleshy receptacle. Other plants that produce achenes are Sunflower with the sunflower fruits. Another classification of fruits are nuts and their shells develop from the ovary wall. They include Almond, Chestnut, and Hazelnut but Walnut and Pecan are not nuts, they are drupes which are fruits with one seed which has a distinct skin. Other example of drupes includes coconut, Peaches, and plums. Pome fruits are another type of fruit which includes pear and apple and these fruits are referred to as Accessory fruits. In accessory fruit, the ovary makes up only the core of the fruit while the flesh of the fruit are modified flower petals. Another type of fruit is Hesperidium fruit which are fruits with partitions and tough rinds. The juicy part of the fruit known as juice sacs were previously hairlike cells on the inside of the ovary. The fruits include grape fruit, oranges, and lemon. http://courses.botany.wisc.edu/botany_400/Lab/LabWK03Fruitkey.html Posted Using INLEO
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