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Strange times...
(lemmy.world)
Berry Club by J.L. Westlover (@mrlovenstein)
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this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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Bananas and watermelons are berries? Huh.
The scientific definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit that came from a single ovary in the flower. Thats it. I don't even know why they used the name berry on this term because it makes no sense and I tell you this as someone studying botany. Like none of the nuts you know are true nuts either. If a nuts shell opens on its own it's not a nut so peanuts, walnuts and almonds are not nuts because if you plant these in fresh soil they will sprout and the shell opens. However if you plant a fresh hazelnut the shell stays on while the plant germinates from the seed, hence it's a true nut. So stupid I know. This has use in botany but these botanical definitions have no use for normal people. That's why we talk about "botanical definitions" and "culinary definitions". In the common culinary definition a berry is a small freshy fruit which is the definition you know.
Bonus: in botany everything from a flower is a fruit. That means wheat is a fruit, rice is a fruit, beans are fruits, peas are fruits, all nuts are fruits, every seed is a fruit, a pine cone is a fruit, and it just goes on. But no one in their right mind would make a fruit asket with pine cones right? The botanical definition is useless outside the field of botany.
Just to add random info/trivia: it's interesting to note that this mess between "botanical fruit" and "culinary fruit" is largely language-dependent. In Portuguese for example it doesn't happen - because botanical fruit is "fruto" (with "o") and culinary fruit is "fruta" (with "a").
So for example, if you tell someone that cucumber is a "fruto", that is not contentious; you're just using a somewhat posh word if you aren't in a botanical context. And if you tell the person that tomato is a "fruta", you're just being silly.
Berry has no direct equivalent. If you must specify that the fruit comes from a single ovary, you call it "fruto simples" (lit. simple botanical-fruit), as opposed to "fruto múltiplo" (multiple fruit - e.g. pineapple). Popularly people will call stuff like strawberries and mulberries by multiple names, like "frutinhas" (little fruits) and the likes.
In German, the fruits you would put in a fruit salat are called Obst, in contrast to Frucht (fruit) / Früchte (fruits) which can be 'anything' complying with the botanical definition. You'd refer to tomatoes and paprika as Frucht-Gemüse (fruit vegetables).
A salad works, but isn't it easier to just snort it? :^)
Sorry for the shitty joke above. Seriously now: after a quick check, apparently the cognate of "Obst" still exists in English, as "ovest". Nowadays only used dialectally for nuts like acorns being fed to the pigs. It would be fun if it was reintroduced as "culinary fruit", following the German example, and keeping the Latin borrowing "fruit" for the botanical def.
hmm I do like being silly