MadSci Network: Botany |
Ben you have asked the question that has caused many an argument. I am going to use the American Heritage Dictionary as my source for my answer. The dictionary says:
fruit 1.a. The ripened ovary or ovaries of a seed-bearing plant, together with accessory parts, containing the seeds and occurring in a wide variety of forms. b. An edible, usually sweet and fleshy form of such a structure. c. A part or an amount of such a plant product, served as food: fruit for dessert vegetable 1.a. A plant cultivated for an edible part, such as the root of the beet, the leaf of spinach, or the flower buds of broccoli or cauliflower. b. The edible part of such a plant. c. A member of the vegetable kingdom; a plant.So you can see that a fruit is the mature seed bearing structures of the plant. The taste and textures that attract animals to eat them are part of the seed dispersal strategy. Look at a fence row sometime where birds like to sit for example. And on the other hand a vegetable can be any part of the plant that is edible prior to the production of seeds.
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