How do you know if something is classified as a fruit or a vegetable?

Question

Does it have something to do with the location of the seeds? Please don't answer unless you know.

Answer 1

A fruit is the matured ovary of a flower, containing the seed. After fertilization takes place and the embryo (plantlet) has begun to develop, the surrounding ovule becomes the fruit. Yum. I won't go on about the four types of fruit--simple, aggregate, multiple and accessory--which explain things like berries and pineapples.

A vegetable is considered to be edible roots, tubers, stems, leaves, fruits, seeds, flower clusters, and other softer plant parts. In common usage, however, there is no exact distinction between a vegetable and a fruit. The usual example is the tomato, which is a fruit, but is eaten as a vegetable, as are cucumbers, peppers, melons, and squashes. The classification of plants as vegetables is largely determined by custom, culture, and usage.

Answer 2

A fruit is actually the sweet, ripened ovary or ovaries of a seed-bearing plant. A vegetable, in contrast, is an herbaceous plant cultivated for an edible part (seeds, roots, stems, leaves, bulbs, tubers, or nonsweet fruits). So, to be really nitpicky, a fruit could be a vegetable, but a vegetable could not be a fruit.
The Nutriquest team offers a similar answer, adding that most fruits are sweet because they contain a simple sugar called fructose, while most vegetables are less sweet because they have much less fructose. The sweetness of fruit encourages animals to eat it and thereby spread the seeds. The site also presents an interesting list of fruits that are often thought to be vegetables:

tomatoes
cucumbers
squashes and zucchini
avocados
green, red, and yellow peppers
peapods
pumpkins

And for more info:
The answer depends on your relationship with the two items. If you’re stocking the produce department at a grocery store, a tomato is a vegetable. If you’re a plant scientist—a botanist—a tomato is a fruit. Cucumbers, pumpkins, avocados, and peppers are all fruits. Culturally, however, the grocer is going to call them vegetables.
A fruit is the ripe ovary or ovaries of a flower—the mature ovary of a seed-bearing plant. Let’s say you’ve got a tomato plant with those little yellow flowers all ready. A bee comes along and fertilizes the flower. The flower starts developing into a fruit with the seed inside. (There are four kinds of fruits, which explains fruits such as pineapple and blueberries, but let's not get into that.) And, hey, guess what? Nuts are fruits. True nuts that is, chestnut and filberts come to mind.
Vegetables, however, are the roots (eg, carrot), tubers (eg, potato), leaves (eg spinach), stems (eg, celery), and other bits of plants that you might eat. For a botanist, a vegetable is sort of like the umbrella word for all the edible parts of a plant. Just to keep life interesting, mushrooms aren’t plants at all, they are a kind of fungus.
Let’s just keep with the cultural distinctions

Answer 3

Biologically speaking, a fruit is the mature ovary or other tissues of a plant (whichever provides protection for the seeds inside). Therefore, cucumbers and tomatoes, which are traditionally considered vegetables, are actually fruits. Vegetables, on the other hand, are usually the roots, stems, leaves or flowers of a plant.

Fruits can also be classified as simple fruits (fruits with one ovary), which includes both dry fruits (achenes, nuts, capsules, legumes, and follicles) and fleshy fruits (drupes, berries, and pomes). The classifications do not necessarily go according to your intuition - for example, bananas and cucumbers are actually berries, whereas strawberries are not! There are also compound fruits, or fruits with more than one ovary - these can be classified as multiple fruits (ex.: pineapple) or aggregate fruits (ex.: strawberry).

Answer 4

A fruit is actually the sweet, ripened ovary or ovaries of a seed-bearing plant.

A vegetable, in contrast, is an herbaceous plant cultivated for an edible part (seeds, roots, stems, leaves, bulbs, tubers, or nonsweet fruits). So, to be really nitpicky, a fruit could be a vegetable, but a vegetable could not be a fruit.

Answer 5

A fruit has seeds on the inside - like apple pips etc a veggie does not
hence a tomato is a fruit - technically.

Hope this helps.

Answer 6

The difference between a fruit and vegetable depends largely on your perspective. From a botanical perspective, a fruit is the mature ovary of a plant, such as an apple, melon, cucumber, or tomato. From the common, every day "grocery store perspective," we tend to use the word fruit with respect to fruits eaten fresh as desserts - apples, peaches, cherries, etc. - and not to items cooked or used in salads. So, tomatoes tend to be lumped in with vegetables because of the way they are used (cooked and in salads), but botanists will call them fruits because they develop from the reproductive structures of plants.

Answer 7

Fruit have seeds on the inside, vegetables are normally roots.

Answer 8

Look in the produce section they separe them , at your grocery store. Just look on the back of the seed package should tell , or at a Lowes etc, Fruite trees, vegg. They grow in different areas at certain times a year. Some on ground and some in trees. Depends what you are looking for. Pem

Answer 9

u tell a fruit from a vegetable by the way it looks. like a vegetables hav smaller seeds and fruits have bigger ones. happy to help.

Answer 10

Something that grows on a tree or a plant.
Grows in a garden, it's usually a vegetable. Excluding strawberries & grapes,
fruits usually grow on trees & bushes.