Amazing facts about Strawberry, raspberry and blackberry

Despite its name strawberry isn't a true berry. Neither is the raspberry or the blackberry. 

So what's the deal why are berries so hard to define?

The discrepancy of berry  nomenclature arose because people called certain fruits “berry” thousands of years before scientist came up with precise definition for the word. Usually, people think of berry as small, squishy that can be picked off plants, but scientific classification is far more complex.

Botanically speaking, a berry has three distinct fleshy layers: the exocarp (outer skin), mesocarp (fleshly middle) and endocarp (innermost part, which holds the seeds). 

in order to be considered a berry, a fruit must develop from a flower that has one ovary.

The same layered  structure appears in other berries, including the banana and the watermelon, although their outer skins are a bit tougher, taking a form of a peel and rind, respectively. (The suffix “carp” comes from the word “carpel"  which refers to the pistil,  the female organ of the flower.)

In addition to be a berry, a fruit must have two or more seeds. Thus, a cherry, which has one seed, doesn't make the berry cut.

Rather, cherries, like other fleshly fruit with thin skin and a central stone that contains a seed, are called dupes. 

Hence, the blueberry is a true berry, tomatoes, pepper, bananas, cranberries, eggplants and kiwis comes from a flower with one ovary, and so are also berries.

Other plants, such as strawberry and the raspberry, have flowers with more than one ovary 

“Raspberries” have those little subunits. Each one of these little subunits comes from an Individual ovary. And those subunits are actually called dupes.

Each drupe contains a seed ; that's why wild raspberries and blackberries are so crunchy. Because the types of fruit consist of many drupes, they're called aggregate fruit.

A strawberry is also an aggregate fruit, but instead of having multiple drupes, it has  multiple achenes, the little yellow ovals on the fruit's surface, which contains a seed 

Strawberries, blackberries and raspberries are aggregate fruits not berries

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