The Fruit Is A Lie

Strawberries, you will be glad to know, are a ‘false fruit’. Which seems reasonable enough. But at this point a small doubt started to grow in my mind... what, actually, then, was a real fruit? Oranges? No, they’re a modified berry. Bananas? Leathery berry. Plums? Drupe — fleshy bit with one stone inside. Peaches, nectarines and mangos, similar. Pineapple? Forget it — multiple fruit, incorporating the support that the original flowers all grow on, making it a pseudo-multiple-carp. Although interestingly and cutely, they are pollinated by hummingbirds and bats. (Not usually simultaneously.)

Apples, I thought. Good old apples. No. They are pomes. What is a pome? Well, It’s a real fruit in the middle and a false fruit round the outside. It’s the real thing dressed up as a fake to avoid detection by the cops. So is the pear.

No. None of them are bloody fruit. I feel so betrayed.

I knew there were a few 'fruits' that weren't actually fruit, but not to this extent!

Source

via Kottke