who, every time you say anything,

they're like "Actually, technically, tomatoes aren't vegetables!"

And... I just.. before we do this episode,

I just want to encourage you not to be that person

But, knowing the real classifications of the stuff that we eat

can tell you a lot about where fruits and vegetables

come from and how they're developed.

So it's pretty interesting

just don't use it to be an insufferable pedant.

For example, officially speaking,

Anything that is a root, stem or leaf of a plant

qualifies as a vegetable.

meaning that some things that you might ordinarily

consider a fruit, is actually a vegetable.

Rhubarb, for instance, we think of a

kind of like a fruity thing because

it's in pie and it tastes so sweet

but it's the stalk of a plant, so its a vegetable.

Vegetable pie...who thought of that?

Corn, zucchini, and green beans, on the other hand

all fruit, so are tomatoes.

That's because these foods are not

roots, stems, or leaves.

They're ovaries.

Hopefully that doesn't make you feel too weird.

So yeah, fruits are the ovaries of a flowering plant

that develop after its seeds are fertilized

or, sometimes, after they've been triggered to

develop without fertilization.

From the plant's perspective, surrounding its seeds

with something soft and juicy and delicious

increases the chances that those seeds will get eaten

and then spread around in nice fertile

piles of poo.

So broccoli and cauliflower are not fruit

even though they are flower buds because they're unopened

the flower hasn't transformed.

True fruits come in lots of different types

and some of them make for excellent anatomy lessons

One key factor for botanists in categorizing fruits is

is how many ovaries the flower had.

So berries by definition are fruits that come from

from a single ovary with multiple seeds.

That makes grapes, bananas, peppers and tomatoes

all different types of berries.

So hold onto your shorts because raspberries

and blackberries are something totally different

They're called aggregate fruits

a whole bunch of little fruits grouped together.

And strawberries aren't berries either

in fact, the tasty red part of the strawberry isn't

even a fruit. Its a special kind of plant structure

called a fleshy receptacle.

You actually have to look much closer at the receptacle

to see the fruit, which are called achenes.

They're dry, one-seeded fruits that speckle

the red surface of the strawberry

Sunflowers produce another achene that you probably

know as sunflower seeds.

Nuts are fruits too and their shells are coats

developed from the ovary wall.

That includes things like chestnuts and hazelnuts

But technically, walnuts and pecans are not nuts,

along with other single ovary fruits like peaches and

and plums and coconuts, they're called drupes.

Drupes only have one seed with a distinct skin,

covering a fleshy middle layer.

In a drupe, the inner layer is often called stone-like,

and if you've ever accidentally chomped on a peach pit,

you understand why.

Now if you want to get super fancy with your botanical terminology

raspberries and blackberries are specifically

aggregate drupes, and each small section is called a druplet.

But many fruits are more than just a ripened flower ovary.

Take pome fruits, for instance, like apples and pears.

Pome fruits are known as accessory fruits because

there's so much more going on in them than a simple ovary

The ovary makes up only the core of the fruit.

The flesh of the fruit is actually modified

flower petals and sepals, the flower parts that cover a bud

and even the knobby receptacle at the base of the flower.

And when you eat hesperidium fruits

you're also getting a mouthful of the unexpected

This category includes fruits with tough rinds

and little partitions, like lemons and grapefruits

and oranges. Turns out that those small packed together

juicy bits in each section, called juice sacs

were once tiny hair like cells on the inside of the ovary,

but they filled bursting with goodness as the fruit ripened.

So the next time you drink a pulpy glass of OJ

enjoy your mouthful of fruit hair.

Thank you for watching this SciShow Dose

which was brought to you by our patrons on Patreon

who allow us to explore the weird majesty of

fruit science. If you want to get behind the scenes

pictures or blooper reels or other cool stuff

and support us, you can go to Patreon.com/scishow

and if you wanna keep getting smarter with us

you can always, please, go to youtube.com/scishow.