Berry Club by J.L. Westlover (@mrlovenstein)
Fun fact: strawberry was admitted to the psychiatric yard once pepper and cucumber joined the berry club.
Fun fact: the psychiatric yard is where the psych ward doctors are allowed to go outside and play for an hour everyday, and where a psychologist is most likely to be shanked by a psychiatrist.
First rule of working in the psych ward: Don’t join a psych gang.
Fun fact: Strawberry is called an accessory fruit because its seeds are on the outside, so the seeds themselves are the real “fruits” (in the same way each grain of rice or wheat is itself a fruit, well technically the fruit consists of the grain plus the outer pod/husk that gets removed when harvested). The red flesh we like to eat is the accessory fruit because it in itself does not contain seeds.
Raspberries and blackberries are called aggregate fruits because they’re essentially many fruits attached together as a single structure. Actually, a strawberry is called an aggregate accessory fruit because it has many “fruits” directly attached to an accessory structure.
If every Uni professor started each lecture with "fun fact: " I bet I’d learn alot more
Some of my profs did! I had one class where the prof would have optional “bonus content” not in the syllabus as a further incentive for people to come to class instead of just reading the lecture slides later.
Great explanation thank you! Interesting facts :)
So bananas are aggregate fruits?
No, bananas are berries.
So aggregates are whole different class of fruit?! I thought it would have been a subcategory
Yeah. If university bio has taught me anything it’s that botany classifications are way more numerous, way more complex, and have way more exceptions than zoology classifications (not to undermine zoology of course, it’s also super complicated). There’s just far more diversity in how different plants accomplish the same things compared to how different animals accomplish them, which makes sense since plants are quite a bit older than animals and also have way more species.
The thing is that the botanical definition of berries doesn’t match perfectly with the everyday definition. That doesn’t make the latter wrong, it just has other applications
Yeah, it’s like the whole “tomatoes are actually a fruit” thing. So are zucchinis and eggplants, but nobody ever brings that up. It’s always tomatoes.
There’s a botanical definition and a culinary definition. So, that doesn’t mean that somebody who calls a tomato a vegetable is wrong. And don’t put any tomatoes in my fruit salad!
Vegetable is also exclusively a culinary definition. Vegetables are essentially any edible plant structure that are not sweet and aren’t the seeds directly (which are grains or nuts). Typically vegetables are flowers, leaves, stems, or roots, but some non-sweet fruits like cucumbers, peppers, and green beans are also squarely in the vegetable category despite definitely being fruits, no reason they can’t be both.
And the concept of a vegetable varies culturally. I live in Germany and I consider mais vegetables (it feels weird to call it corn in this context since other grains aren’t). In Romania (and elsewhere I guess) potatoes are a vegetable which they aren’t for me.
So is potato like a grain to you? In the sense of treating it more like a staple?
Absolutely! Potatoes, grains (except mais) and legumes (except green beans) are carbs (or staples). Polenta is too, despite being made of mais.
I thought that’s the default?
I don’t know who downvoted that but it wasn’t me. I get where you’re coming from, but I think more in terms of the part of the plant I suppose.
Carrots, corn, and peas all poke holes in that definition. It’s a culinary definition but also an arbitrary and subjective one, trying to define rules just makes it more ridiculous.
It’s intelligent to know that tomatoes are fruits and it’s wise not to put then into a fruit salad
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A tomato based fruit salad is called salsa.
Come up with an everyday definition for berry that includes strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries but excludes grapes, figs, and cherry tomatoes without identifying any particular fruit by name.
how about:
*berr*cucumberr [PASS]
Oh yeah! As in “cucumberring the salad will improve it!”
Sure. One is grown on a berry farm, the other isn’t.
I could try to but I don’t need to. The fact that you could easily name some fruits that aren’t berries is proof enough that you have a concept of what a berry is and what isn’t. Coming up with a definition would be the next step.
So I agree that “definition” is the wrong word. I should have said “concept”. Besides: what’s wrong with definitions that are just a list of elements?
I mean personally I always thought it was fucking stupid that a strawberry is the same kind of thing as a blueberry but a grape isn’t. Apparently Iceland agrees.
It’s all a social construct. It exists because and as long as we all agree on it. So it’s flexible and not set in stone, nor scientifically falsifiable
Use for ice cream, pies, and smothies berries.
Are grapes not considered berries in the anglosphere? In Icelandic they literally are named “Wine berries” and considered as such.
More evidence than the concept of “an every day definition of berry” is completely meaningless
I mean, it isn’t meaningless, just culturally subjective and lacking a rigerous definition. Berries are a set of specific fruit, which fruit being included being determined by the culture in question base on percieved similarities and historic uses. We use it to quickly bring up the specific group and whatever vague characteristics we percieve them to share.
So, the definition for berries that you seek is simply “the fruit people you’re interested in would point at and identify as a berry”, which is a vague definition and not rigerous at all, but most people would in fact think of the same thing you do if you say “I put berries on top of my cake”. If I ask my wife “hey, on your way home swing by the store and buy some berries, any type will do”, she will not bring a watermelon. She in fact will buy what we both agree are berries, and so the word has useful meaning.
You’ll find most classifications humans have do this too. The real world is really good at refusing to fit into the neat boxes we made to classify it and the things in it, and yet we can still use them fine enough as long as we don’t get lost in semantics and wondering if a hot dog is a sandwich or cereal soup.
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Some berries are just Berry In Name Only.
Bananas and watermelons are berries? Huh.
The scientific definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit that came from a single ovary in the flower. Thats it. I don’t even know why they used the name berry on this term because it makes no sense and I tell you this as someone studying botany. Like none of the nuts you know are true nuts either. If a nuts shell opens on its own it’s not a nut so peanuts, walnuts and almonds are not nuts because if you plant these in fresh soil they will sprout and the shell opens. However if you plant a fresh hazelnut the shell stays on while the plant germinates from the seed, hence it’s a true nut. So stupid I know. This has use in botany but these botanical definitions have no use for normal people. That’s why we talk about “botanical definitions” and “culinary definitions”. In the common culinary definition a berry is a small freshy fruit which is the definition you know.
Bonus: in botany everything from a flower is a fruit. That means wheat is a fruit, rice is a fruit, beans are fruits, peas are fruits, all nuts are fruits, every seed is a fruit, a pine cone is a fruit, and it just goes on. But no one in their right mind would make a fruit asket with pine cones right? The botanical definition is useless outside the field of botany.
Just to add random info/trivia: it’s interesting to note that this mess between “botanical fruit” and “culinary fruit” is largely language-dependent. In Portuguese for example it doesn’t happen - because botanical fruit is “fruto” (with “o”) and culinary fruit is “fruta” (with “a”).
So for example, if you tell someone that cucumber is a “fruto”, that is not contentious; you’re just using a somewhat posh word if you aren’t in a botanical context. And if you tell the person that tomato is a “fruta”, you’re just being silly.
Berry has no direct equivalent. If you must specify that the fruit comes from a single ovary, you call it “fruto simples” (lit. simple botanical-fruit), as opposed to “fruto múltiplo” (multiple fruit - e.g. pineapple). Popularly people will call stuff like strawberries and mulberries by multiple names, like “frutinhas” (little fruits) and the likes.
In German, the fruits you would put in a fruit salat are called Obst, in contrast to Frucht (fruit) / Früchte (fruits) which can be ‘anything’ complying with the botanical definition. You’d refer to tomatoes and paprika as Frucht-Gemüse (fruit vegetables).
In German, the fruits you would put in a fruit salat are called Obst
A salad works, but isn’t it easier to just snort it? :^)
Sorry for the shitty joke above. Seriously now: after a quick check, apparently the cognate of “Obst” still exists in English, as “ovest”. Nowadays only used dialectally for nuts like acorns being fed to the pigs. It would be fun if it was reintroduced as “culinary fruit”, following the German example, and keeping the Latin borrowing “fruit” for the botanical def.
hmm I do like being silly
A pine cone is a fruit?
I was taught a pine cone was a “naked flower”, as it never developed petals and ovary developed directly and bore the seed.
It appears you are right. Conifers and other gymnosperms are totally outside the definition of fruit and cannot have fruit by definition. The seed cone is however an analog of a fruit for the gymnosperms. It doesn’t have to do with petals however. Lots of flowering plants don’t have petals. Example are these wheat flowers. You have to cut up the plant to even see the flower.
New knowledge acquired! Thank you. Wasn’t aware of that detail.
we should be inventing new words. A fleshy fruit from a single ovary in a flower is now called a skibidi
a banana is a skibidi. a tomato is a skibidi
Like none of the nuts you know are true nuts either.Found it funny that you then mentioned peanuts which grow in the ground contrary to all other things people think about when talking about nuts.
And yeah, I know I’ll just have blown some people’s mind with that info.
Huh… peanuts coming from underground is such an obvious memory for me I don’t recall where I learned it. It feels like something everyone just knows, like carrots, potatoes, and yams. It didn’t occur to me outside of today’s lucky 10000 that a lot wouldn’t know.
I wonder if its really aot of people or just some.
I think it’s a lot of people because people think they’re nuts because of the name and they never have earth left on them unlike potatoes or carrots…
Peanuts growing underground is also really weird. Very few plants hide their fruit like that.
Fun fact: in German, peanuts are called “Erdnuss”, which literally translates to “soil nut”, which seems actually fit like a glove. To be honest, I never thought about the name it has. Learn something new every day.
Let’s be real. We all now what a berry is, and bananas and watermelons ain’t it. Forget the scientific mumbo jumbo
Well said Jerry Smith.
We might as well call Pluto a planet at this point
Honestly, it seems like someone came up with very strange definitions that don’t actually work.
They work very well if you’re trying to identify and classify plants.
Melons and pumpkins are called Panzerbeeren by german botanists.
Beer Tank
I can’t be bothered to look up the actual translation, so that is what I’m calling them from now on.
Shell berries.
Tank berry
Wait until your learn that dinosaurs are technically still alive, since birds are dinosaurs.
Wait, aren’t humans dinosaurs as well as we derive somehow from lizards? Do lizards count as dinosaurs? Sorry if I get that confused.
OG blueberry still a member, chillaxin with the other true berries.
Feels like Daria debunking the Fashion Club.
Knott’s Berry Farm is a house of lies.
Wow you can’t just assign your own labels to other people like that.
