Fruit

A fruit is the part of a flowering plant that holds its seeds. Fruits grow from the flower after it is pollinated. Their main job is to protect the seeds and help spread them to new places where they can grow. Apples, oranges, grapes, and watermelons are all fruits, but so are many foods most people call vegetables.

Every fruit starts as a flower. When pollen lands on a flower, the flower can make seeds. As the seeds form, the bottom part of the flower swells up and turns into the fruit around them. Petals fall off, and the fruit slowly grows bigger. Cut open an apple and you can still see this story. The little brown bits in the core are the seeds, and the soft white part used to be the base of the flower.

Plants make fruits to trick animals into helping them. A bright color, a sweet smell, or a sugary taste are all advertisements. An animal eats the fruit, walks or flies far away, and later drops the seeds in its waste. The seeds land in new soil with a bit of natural fertilizer. Some fruits use other tricks. Coconuts float across oceans. Maple "helicopter" fruits spin through the wind. Burdock fruits stick to fur, which is the idea that inspired Velcro.

Scientists and cooks do not always agree on what counts as a fruit. To a botanist, any seed-holding part of a flower is a fruit. That means tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, pumpkins, and even green beans are fruits. To a cook, a fruit is something sweet you might eat for dessert, and a vegetable is something savory you cook with dinner. Both are useful ways of thinking. They just answer different questions.

The names can get even stranger. A strawberry is not a true berry, because its seeds sit on the outside. A banana, a grape, and a tomato all are true berries by the scientific definition. Peaches, cherries, and plums are called stone fruits because they have one big hard seed in the middle, called a pit.

People have grown fruit for at least 10,000 years, since the time of early farming. Wild apples were once small and sour. Over many lifetimes, farmers saved seeds from the sweetest trees, and slowly the apple we know today appeared. Most of the fruit in a grocery store has a long human history hidden inside it.