Tag: fruit

berry interesting

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berryinteresting

I think I already knew that tomatoes were berries. But avocados? Apparently so!

In botany, a berry is a fleshy fruit produced from a single flower containing one ovary. Under that definition, bananas, cucumbers, and eggplants are also berries.

But many of the fruit we commonly called berries, e.g. raspberries and blackberries, are not. They are aggregate or compound fruits containing seeds from different ovaries of a single flower, with the individual “fruitlets” joined at maturity to form the complete fruit.

Berrrrrrrry interesting.

Ficus carica

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figleaves

I was reading up on the fig leaf in Western culture, and came across a funny story:

The V&A Museum in London holds a plaster cast of Michelangelo’s David. When Queen Victoria first saw the replica, she was reportedly so horrified by its nudity that a proportionally sized fig leaf was commissioned to cover the statue’s genitals. The leaf was kept on hand for royal visits and attached to the figure with two discreet hooks 😂.

comparison study

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pawpaw

The tropical/subtropical fruit that Australians call pawpaw (Carica papaya) is known as papaya in the US. Americans have their own pawpaw (or papaw)—Asimina triloba—a completely different species, native to the eastern United States and southern Ontario, Canada.

Interestingly, though we’re Australian, the traditional folk song my mother taught me as a child—“Pick ‘em up pawpaws, put ‘em in your pocket, way down yonder in the pawpaw patch”—is of American origin. The ‘patch’ refers to Asimina triloba‘s characteristic patch-forming clonal growth habit. And presumably the fruit that one picks up has fallen to the ground, and one’s apron pocket is roomy.

I’d like to try American pawpaw. I think custard apples are delicious, so I’m sure I’d like them.

Psidium guajava

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Psidium guajava

I’ve never grown common guavas—this tree is in my MIL’s yard—so I don’t know if this growth pattern is normal. I don’t see it on any of the images that a quick search pulls up. Part of the flower (a sepal?) persists as the fruit grows, forming a tough ”hood”. Looking at variously-sized fruits on the tree, it seems that this hood stays the same size as the fruit enlarges. Presumably it eventually falls off. What is the purpose of this phenomenon? Is it unique to this tree?