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Concept
Berry (botany)
Summary
In botany, a berry is a fleshy fruit without a stone (pit) produced from a single flower containing one ovary. Berries so defined include grapes, currants, and tomatoes, as well as cucumbers, eggplants (aubergines) and bananas, but exclude certain fruits that meet the culinary definition of berries, such as strawberries and raspberries. The berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire outer layer of the ovary wall ripens into a potentially edible "pericarp". Berries may be formed from one or more carpels from the same flower (i.e. from a simple or a compound ovary). The seeds are usually embedded in the fleshy interior of the ovary, but there are some non-fleshy exceptions, such as Capsicum species, with air rather than pulp around their seeds.
Many berries are edible, but others, such as the fruits of the potato and the deadly nightshade, are poisonous to humans.
A plant that bears berries is said to be bacciferous or baccate (a fruit that resembles a berry, whether it actually is a berry or not, can also be called "baccate").
In everyday English, a "berry" is any small edible fruit. Berries are usually juicy, round, brightly coloured, sweet or sour, and do not have a stone or pit, although many small seeds may be present.
In botanical language, a berry is a simple fruit having seeds and fleshy pulp (the pericarp) produced from the ovary of a single flower. The ovary can be inferior or superior. It is indehiscent, i.e. it does not have a special "line of weakness" along which it splits to release the seeds when ripe. The pericarp is divided into three layers. The outer layer is called the "exocarp" or "epicarp"; the middle layer, the "mesocarp" or "sarcocarp"; the inner layer, the "endocarp". Botanists have not applied these terms consistently. Exocarp and endocarp may be restricted to more-or-less single-layered "skins", or may include tissues adjacent to them; thus on one view, the exocarp extends inwards to the layer of vascular bundles ("veins"). The inconsistency in usage has been described as "a source of confusion".
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