the.com/berry
Botany's biggest liar — bananas qualify, strawberries don't, and nobody asked.
means A small, soft, round fruit, often juicy and edible — though the botanical definition (a fleshy fruit from a single flower's ovary, seeds inside) sprawls far beyond what we'd call a berry at the grocery store.
from From Old English 'berie,' a word for an edible fruit, with cousins across the Germanic family — Old High German 'beri,' Old Norse 'ber,' and modern German 'Beere.' The deeper root is uncertain, but it's long been a humble, all-purpose name for small fruits, which is exactly why it now sits awkwardly atop a botanical definition no one in everyday English ever signed up for.
- strawberry snub
- Not a berry; seeds outside disqualify it
- banana truth
- Botanically a berry, surprisingly enough
- watermelon too
- Counts as a giant modified berry
- color trick
- Bright hues evolved to bribe animals into spreading seeds
- toxic cousins
- Many wild berries can kill you fast
strawberry — fruit plant, genus fragaria, cultivated globally with ~9 million tons produced annually
blueberry — fruit of vaccinium species, oregon produces 27% of us commercial crop
blackberry — rubus genus fruit, invasive in pacific northwest but harvested commercially in mexico and europe
cranberry — vaccinium macrocarpon, wisconsin produces 60% of us supply, harvested in wetland bogs