This article is about the fruit. For other meanings, see Berry (disambiguation).

In botany, the berry is the most common type of simple fleshy fruit; one in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. The ovary is always superior in these flowers, and they have one or more carpels within a thin covering and very fleshy interiors. The seeds are embedded in the common flesh of the ovary.

In this sense, the tomato is a berry and the strawberry is not. Other examples of botanical berries include the grape, date, avocado, persimmon, eggplant, guava, and chile pepper. The fruit of citrus, such as the orange and lemon, is a modified berry called a hesperidium. A plant that bears berries is referred to as bacciferous.

In common parlance and cuisine, the term "berry" refers generically to any small, sweet fruit; in this sense, the strawberry is a berry and the tomato is not. Other berries in this but not the botanical sense include aggregate fruits like the blackberry, raspberry, and boysenberry, as well as the false berries such as blueberry, cranberry, and gooseberry and its currant relatives (e.g. blackcurrant, redcurrant).

These fruits tend to be small, sweet, juicy, and of a bright color contrasting with their background to make them more attractive to animals that disperse them and thus scatter the seeds of the plant.

See also

• List of fruits
• False berry

External links

• The National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens Has a very nice description.