When is a fruit not a fruit?

Question

Apparently there is a common fruit which is actually not a fruit, but a flower of something. Bit vague, but has anyone got any ideas? Just intrigued! Thanks!

Yeah, we were aware of the tomato/ cucumber etc thing as fruits, bananas are herbs apparently as they've had their seeds bred out of them, we were eating strawberries at the time and it was them that my friend thought that were flowers, but they do flower before they fruit, so I'm not convinced!

Answer 1

Is a tomato a fruit? According to the dictionary it is!
to·mato: soft juicy red or yellow fruit eaten raw or cooked as a vegetable.

What exactly is a fruit?
fruit: fleshy, seed-bearing part of a plant used as food; quantity of these.

Why isn't the tomato a vegetable?
ve·get·able: part of various types of plants eaten as food.

The fruit-vegetables are as healthy as fruit. Some cookbooks make a distinction between fruit, fruit vegetables and vegetables. If you look at it that way; a tomato is a fruit-vegetable. Same as the fruits below: egg-fruit, green pepper, hot pepper, avocado, red pepper, cucumber, tomato and zuchini. These fruits contain the same nutritious elements as the common fruits and contribute as much to your diet as the fruits we call fruit vegetables.

There might be more fruit to discover than you thought!

Answer 2

Actually the tomato was classified as a vegetable back during the colonial days. As fruits were considered a luxury item, the taxes on them were really high. Since the tomato was an everyday food item, they wanted the tax to be lower so they claimed it as a vegetable. It's really a fruit by definition.

Answer 3

a fruit is the part of the plant that surrounds the seeds. strawberries: the seeds are inside those little dots, so the dots are the fruits. same with pineapple
tomato: all the red stuff surrounds the seeds, therefore it is a fruit
and so on.
note: the dots on the peel of a potato are not fruits, they are dirt or something else. but the potato is the cauli of the plant, so it cannot be a fruit.

Answer 4

I think I heard that about strawberries. Apple blossoms also develop from flowers into apples. I don't know if this qualifies, but it's equally interesting, but a tomato, commonly thought of as a veggie, is actually a fruit.

Answer 5

Yeah, it's a fig. I saw some article on it recently in Cooking Light, I think. The fruits are the little crunchy seeds inside. I don't remember that from botany class, though. I can't remember what they said about figs in that class.

Answer 6

Tomatoes are a fruit, Veg's grow in the ground

Answer 7

An artichoke is the flower of a thistle plant....

Do not let botanical terms for fruits/veggies (do they make a flower? do they not?) confuse you with what we commonly call fruits/veggies when meal planning. It's not worth the brain power.

Answer 8

A fruit is not a fruit when pigs fly. They won't name a thing that's not a fruit a fruit, right??? Use common sense and logic, person!!!

Answer 9

A fruit has seeds or a stone, a vegetable does not.

Answer 10

Im not too sure but i think anything with seeds in it is a fruit.